00 - Author's Note and Prologue
For the past 18 years, I have been working on a story, on and off.
Its beginnings were in a fun exercise for myself and other 501st Sandtroopers. We all wrote up a 1-2 page bio for ourselves, creating a fictional backstory for our Sandtrooper persona. We formed a small local group called the 104th Moisture Farm Patrol. We had a group, we made patches, and now I was going to write our story. I took the bios, and began writing what was to have been a 10 page or so story using our characters.
18 years, 38 chapters and roughly 200,000 words later, I am still working on this tale, which resides within the Original Trilogy timeline, coexisting with the events of our favorite films. It is told and seen as just outside the frame of the those camera lenses, or from a reverse angle, or B camera perspective.
While I have made it through the timeline of the original 1977 film, and am just catching up to the EMPIRE timeline, it is still VERY much a work in progress. It was written in a stream-of-consciousness fashion on breaks and lunches at my job, after I put my then-young kids to bed, at the beach, or whenever I had a few moments of inspiration. It was begun before Rogue One was even thought of, much less canon, and originally utilized pre-Star Wars inspiration and tie-in from the “stolen death star plans” events of the NPR Radioplay. It has had little to no editing, until now.
This year, I have begun at the beginning, working my way through the story, chapter by chapter, trying to update it with what is now canon data from Rogue One, Solo, Clone Wars, REBELS, Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and Andor, and will continue to examine/edit it as new shows emerge.
If you decide to read, I would love to hear feedback. I’m not a professional writer, so please remember that and try to be kind. If you have ideas for cool things you would like to see happen, or questions, I’d love to hear, and consider them.
As in the past, work on this is done as I can get to it.
Please be patient, and enjoy.
Although the two thermal detonators themselves did not vibrate in any way, I swear I could feel the restrained energy awaiting release within the two orbs in my outstretched hands. In the dim light between the cloaked figure and me, tiny embedded lights in the detonators pulsed on and off. I was fully prepared to discharge both devices, definitively concluding the paths of two warriors, and departing life in this moment, if it became necessary.
My lightsaber lay on a stone workbench on the second level of the cave. The blade I had used to hunt and execute countless numbers of his kind during ‘The Purge’ would not save me this time. As I had been taught years before, my mind was clear and guarded. There would be no tricks played by the Jedi who stood between the cave opening and me.
My preoccupation with the job at hand must have been thoroughly distracting, or he was exceptionally powerful, for by the time his approach was felt, it was too late. In the seemingly endless space between the nanoseconds that now ticked away, my mind raced, crashing through a cascade of memories as I recalled the chain of events that had brought us both to this singular moment . . .