A Night to Remember

Setting

One year before the Battle of Yavin (34:4:12) on the planet Brentaal (Cormond cantina, Imperial Garrison base, and The Spicer's Folly cantina).

Characters

Corporal Enzaki, Sergeant Joe Horn, Corporal Ian Manco, Major Dagon Tong, and Sergeant Torbel.

Dagon Tong took another deep breath of Brentaal air. Far more pleasant than the filtered and recycled air of a star cruiser, that much he was sure. Cormond was certainly bigger than some of the places that he had left his boot prints, and infinitely smaller than Coruscant or Coronet city. A pleasant compromise. A good place to fight a war, thought the major. He sat in the corner booth of a local cantina, the Spicer’s Folley. It had quite a reputation in the capital city as being a seedy place for seedy deals. And that was why it had been chosen. The riff raff of a galaxy filtered through it in various degrees, from fully armored bounty hunters and mercenaries to the dregs of even the criminals, dirt poor pickpockets and raw thugs. Tong smiled inside the nondescript helmet. Before him were four men, all equally nondescript. Just four mercenaries on planet, nursing drinks, and waiting for work. These four men were storm commando operators, and like Tong, not even part of the regular commando pool, all were ghosts. Tactically sound, and unquestioning of their orders once the operation started, and more than competent enough to aid in the planning phases. They were all grim faced veterans, and they spoke like it.

“This isn’t Mantoonie, and this sure isn’t Fest. We can’t hope that no one caught on after Fest. Rebels aren’t that stupid, and the ones that are, are already dead,” the first to raise an objection to the plan of action was Sergeant Jon Horn. He wore no helmet, and sat with his blaster pistol on the table in front of him, right next to the strong alcohol that the man seemed to run on when he was not on duty. He was considered off duty for the next week while preparations for the mission were finalized, and the plan carried out. He took advantage of it. But alcoholic or not, he was a gifted soldier, and a close quarters combat expert. To assault a building and come out alive, with desired hostage in hand, he was one of the best around.

“But Brentaal has already seen violence in its streets. Rebs made a grab for an ISB officer. The people know this is a shooting war, and with the holonet blaring out how the Rebellion is nothing but a bunch of blood thirsty terrorists, they’ll bite on something that backs that up,” the man defending the idea now was one Corporal Enzaki. Tong often thought that if not for this part of the Army, the man would have been executed months ago. He enjoyed detonations more than he should, and more than enough to get into trouble in the armories of ships and garrisons he’d been stationed on.

Corporal Ian Manco shook his head a bit, taking a sip of the coffee left in front of him, almost untouched until now. His voice resembled Tong’s, but only in that it sounded like someone was dragging a body across gravel, “I don’t think that you’ll get all that you want in one shot here. ISB seems to think that more politicians support the Rebellion on this planet than Fest or Mantoonie, and if they are, you’ll see if quickly, because people will be on their pulpits, preaching that this wasn’t the Rebellion’s work. You’ll need a string of incidents, multiple in a week to discredit the rebs, and my paper work said I was here for a week, and a week only.” The sniper shook his head again, and grimaced at the mug after another sip.

A soft sigh escaped the forth man, a Sergeant Tornbel, “We don’t have the men to pull this off. We need more strikes, and bigger. If we have them, the populace goes up in arms against the attackers, and the goal is accomplished. If we don’t have the men or the number of attacks, it could be swept under the rug.” He was a gifted general operator, and was up for a promotion, though he had no idea about it.

Dagon Tong shook his head through out all this. He knew just a bit more than his men about what exactly was happening on planet, and how the dynamics had changed. With a single death, it might have opened the flood gates, made his job infinitely shorter and easier. He was quiet when he spoke, the voice scrubbers in his helmet robbing his words of any identifying features, “Lieuteant Targon of the Imperial Security Bureau was murdered last night. No one is quite sure if it was meant to be a snatch and grab, or if they just wanted the man dead, but what they are sure of is that he was stabbed, and died before he could reach a hospital. And it’s not been hidden, and won’t be by the public relations people. Our target is the hospital that attempted to treat the man. It is the busiest hospital on this planet.”

The four other men turned towards their commanding officer with neutral faces, Horn giving a nod of understanding, “A simple operation, leave signs of rebel activity, enough that cannot be ignored, and send the building into orbit. And do it by weeks end.” Even with the ability to use holograms for mapping and such, Tong preferred the printed two dimensional version. It allowed them to scrutinize their target without anyone else getting an inkling of what was going on. The planning stage went quickly, and even Horn didn’t have time to order another drink. The hospital had not been designed with security as the paramount concern, and it showed. Power and gas lines came off a main conduit that ran through the hospital’s basement, and the basement was patrolled only by a trio of guards, more concerned with the storage facilities there than the mechanical sections. Thirty minutes after meeting, the five men had finalized a rather simple assault, and had exited the Spicer’s Folley. It had been decided that instead of postponing until near the end of the week, it would be far better to strike at the hospital now, and was more practical. Though none of the five men particularly enjoyed life aboard a ship, they enjoyed the idea of being captured by the Rebels far less, and did not plan on staying on the planet long enough for that to happen. And the longer the delay on the operation, the more chance that they would be thwarted. But as they loaded into their separate vehicles, that possibility seemed remote. All went separate ways, to secure the equipment they would need from the caches they had brought on planet with them. Aside from the planning phase and the actual mission, none would see any of the others, not to socialize or discuss the after affects of their actions. They had a meeting time selected, and a rather simple rendezvous point.

In two hours, the five men stood in the parking area of the hospital, each carrying a duffle bag with him. They still appeared as mercenaries, in armor and helmets, and they made no attempt to conceal their presence. Instead, once all were situated, they moved boldly into the parking structure, and took the turbo lift to the maintenance section of the hospital. No one was in the halls at so late an hour, not a mechanic or apprentice or janitor. From there, a stairwell brought them into the basement. It smelled of mold and stagnant water, but better than a swamp, or so though Tong as he stepped fully into the basement. As each man reached the basement, a blaster carbine was drawn from the duffle bag, stocks collapsed, and they fanned out. All except Enzaki swept and cleared the section of the basement, and he moved instead to the gas main, his target. Kneeling down to have better access to the under side and back of the pipe, he opened his duffle bag. Inside where demolition charges, confiscated from Rebel caches. Laying on his back under the pipe and dragging the duffle bag along as he crawled, the demolitions expert attached one charge every few feet to the back of the main. The process took about ten minutes total, and twenty charges were set. It would have been done in half that time, except that Enzaki was thorough, and had made sure to tamper proof the charges. They couldn’t be stopped or disarmed now, and the timers were set and running, giving the team ten minutes to get clear. A short grunt, and a nod to the major was all it took to get the team moving again. The team began its evacuation, Horn leading as point man, and Tong providing rear security for his team. But the smooth operation was tossed on its ear with a single shout.

“Stop! Intruders!” came the shout from one of the roving patrols, who had happened into the maintenance sector of the basement, his blaster pistol shaking in his hand, and pointed at Tong. The guardsmen took a few steps forward, his pistol jutted out in front of him, trying to steady his aim. Tong did not speak, only a quick turn of his torso, his carbine snapping up to his shoulder and his finger squeezing the trigger. The entire sequence took less than a second, and the unfortunate guard was dead before he could react in any meaningful way. He managed to get off a shot as the commando turned, but it was wide, impacting with the wall. The sparks resulting activated the fire suppression system, and elicited a curse from Tong. “Move!” came the order, and the team hustled back towards their escape. The pair of shots had alerted the basement security force, but more importantly, the fire alarm had alerted the entire hospital. It was enraging to see the operation swirl away into such failure, but the team did not reflect on it. More guards attempted to stop them, but were cut down easily by the two men at the front of the formation. Both Horn and Enzaki wasted no shots, and all but ploughed a path out of the hospital. Tong and Cornbel were just as successful in making sure that none of the security force managed to get behind the team for an easy shot. Grenades and blasters combined to turn the ground floor of the hospital into an urban war zone, patients and care givers alike diving for cover and cowering.

The trip back to the parking area took much longer than anticipated, a full seven minutes. By that point, Enzaki had reminded them all of what would happen if they delayed much longer with a simple, “Boom in ten,” over their secure radio frequency. The scream of blasters continued to sound, but the five men managed to navigate their way through both the chaos and opposition, and arrive back at their speeders. The lead men managed their escape easily enough, covering their partners for the needed amount of time before mounting up. Enzaki and Tong weren’t so lucky. The planetary security force had arrived to aid with the distress, and the added enemies would not be held back. Enzaki was struck no less than five times before Tong’s eyes, his demolition expert slumping in scorched ruin against his speeder, his armor still smoking from the charred blast points. Tong uttered something under his breathe, something that the modern army of the Empire had little memory of, but the older storm troopers had heard many times. A short phrase in Manda’o echoed in the man’s ears as he pitched his last grenade into the knot of enemies, and once it had detonated, he grabbed the down man and pulled him into his speeder before closing the door behind himself. It seemed almost a moot point to make it into his vehicle. As he watched with a snarl on his features, the security gates were closing. And he doubted that his speeder would do much good against the detonation that was coming. He checked his chronometer, and gunned the engine, hoping to slip beneath the gate before it had fully closed. The three seconds that it took for the vehicle to escape seemed like as many days. But finally, the craft did escape, though lost its top engine to the gate, and shot off into the night, leaving the surviving security forces as well as those trapped in the security lock down in the hospital to struggle with the gates that barred the exits.

Thirty seconds after the speeder had disappeared, the head of security stood glaring at the gate in the parking structure. He was of the mind that his men were as good as any military unit, and that hospital security should be a top priority for those that paid the bills. He could not believe that five men had made such a mess. He could not begin to think of how he was going to save his job, except maybe to blame the lack of funding, the lack of men at his disposal. The bodies behind him wouldn’t do much to help the argument, since no less than twenty men had fallen against five. And what did they have to show for it? Not one of the attackers was lying next to his dead guards. The last thought that passed through his head was that at least the speeder would not get far, not once he went upstairs to report it to the capital’s police force. And then the hospital erupted, leaving a crater worthy of a meteor strike, and sending up a fire ball visible from high up in the stratosphere.

Two hours and five speeders later, Tong sat in the garrison's medical bay, watching Enzaki float in the bacta tank. He thought it impressive that the man had survived, even with the doctors on staff telling the major that his man would only loose a ring finger, and have five or six new scars to show. That brought a smile to the face of the scarred soldier. It was hard to find good demolition experts, and the fact that he did not have to look for a new one made his wine taste all that much better, a blessing since he hated wine.