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Mos Espa

First Strike: Episode 3

I shield my eyes as the bright binary sunlight streams into the cockpit as Ensign Peliares arcs the Venture in to land (I thought it best to learn his name seeing how he gets the job of hauling our butts out of the fire once this op is over). We touch down and I holler down the comlink.

"Move out people! Dust off in 60 seconds, Go! Go! Go!"

I yank the headset from me as I rise donning my combat helmet and pulling down the goggles, I get Peliares attention.

"Alright Ensign, take her up to high orbit and await our signal for retrieval. If you should encounter contact up there high tail it outta there and head for the rendezvous point with the reserve strike force. And try and keep the Venture in one piece, okay?"

Lt. Twigs exits the cockpit just before me as we head for the boarding ramp.

"He'd better or there'll be hell to pay."

Then we're out in a swirling dust cloud and the whine of the Venture's engines reaches a deafening pitch as she lifts off and heads once again for space. Making our way to the nearby adobe structures we're greeted by a Twi’lek woman in the hardy gear of a Tatooine farmer, but the military blaster on her hip told a different story. As the dust settles she beckons all of us into a courtyard. I spy several speeders within waiting for us flanked by similarly attired gruff looking men, a number of old battered X-34 Landspeeders and a few utilitarian Landspeeders with a custom repeating blaster mounted on the cargo bed. Nice. I remove my goggles and introduce myself.

"Commander Quinn, Alleyah Faal I presume?"

She nods in my direction.

"Welcome Commander, we have been briefed on your mission. These speeders have been requisitioned for you to help you blend in. We'll also accompany you as local guides in your hunt for the item. Our cover as local militia and small time mercenaries has given us access to some, shall we say, unsavoury people, and as a result we have a wide selection of exotic equipment available that may be of use to you."

Exotic, or in other words illegal. I accompany her as she heads towards the reinforced cargo canisters near the speeders.

"Yeah, I've heard word of your operation here, as kind of the middle man between the underworld black market and the Alliance. You deal with Jabba's gun runners and they sell to you quite happily under the guise of mercs, so they are blissfully unaware that their weapons are going into the hands of the Rebellion."

Faal pulls open the first canister and hurls what looks to be a Wookiee Bowcaster. I catch it and swiftly shift it to the ready to fire position. Quite heavy, but well balanced.
Twigs catches up with us checking out the equipment on display.

"To be honest I wouldn't think the Hutts would really care who they sold their weapons to, as long as they make a fast credit."

Faal picks up some discarded drinks bottles and places them on a low wall a few yards away as she responds.

"Yes I'm as you say the middle man, and indeed the Hutts will always sell to the highest bidder, whoever that happens to be, but information is power, not to mention another commodity that they will be all too happy to sell to other parties, the less the Hutts know about our Rebel connections the better. Those have just come on the market. Bowcasters with custom cocking and firing assemblies, designed so that you no longer need the strength of a Wookiee to operate them. Try it out."

I pull the trigger and the first of the salvo of emerald green blaster fire scorches the wall just to the left of the bottles. I check the sights and give them some slight adjustment to zero them in. With the second blast I vaporise all of them with ease.

"Nice. Has some kick to it, but is pretty damned accurate. We'll take a few of these. What else have you got in there?"

Faal allows me to check out her inventory and it is quite extensive.

"Proximity Mines? Yeah, we'll have a few of them. Imperial deployable personal shield generators? How did you get a hold of these? I thought they were still in the experimental stage? Wait. Heh, Twigs, check this out, you'll like this."

I throw a long cobalt blue rifle his way and he snatches it out of the air.

"Hell no, a Disruptor rifle? Do you know on how many systems these are illegal?"

He feels the weight, hefts it to a firing position and aims down the sophisticated telescopic sight. Faal goes over to him to help him go over the weapon's features.

"Well the reason they are illegal is the fact that they are so powerful, amongst other things, what you have to remember is that this extra power will punch straight through Imperial Strormtroooper armour even at range. Also the unique power core means that you'll rarely have to recharge this weapon. The beam emitter limits visible beam flash, and the bolt is so tightly packed that you get minimum drop over distance, you'll not find a more accurate sniper rifle in the galaxy."

Twigs looks up from the sight of the weapon and can't help but drink in the Twi’lek's comely features. He looks back down the scope.

"Heh, sold, I'll take ten."

Chuckling I round up the troops. Checking with Lt. Walker I get a confirmation on the direction we need to be heading, and confer with Faal, she believes the only sizable settlement out in that direction is Mos Espa, but she'll be able to determine more the closer we get. I have my men load up Artee on the back, and then jump in the driving seat of a beat up old X-34 and Walker gets in beside me packing his tracking gear.

"Okay men, let’s get the kit loaded on the speeders and prepare to move out. We're not here to get a tan y'know."

My motley crew mount up and the convoy of speeders kick up a storm of sand and dust as we head out of Anchorhead across the desert, bound for Mos Espa.

The trek across the Jundland Wastes is further than we’d thought, but still it isn't too long before we clear a brace of dunes to be greeted with the sight of the small settlement of Mos Espa, nestled in between the open desert to the south and the northern mountain ranges of the Jundland Wastes. We circle the town and enter from the north. Slowing down I key my comlink and hail my company's Sergeant.

"Rabid, dismount with four men and commence and north to south sweep of the town."

I turn to see the Sarge nod to me gruffly and signal the last two speeders in the convoy to pull up. I turn back to the road ahead surveying the urban landscape around us drinking in all the tactical information I can, the convoy continues to head south down the main street that snakes through the town. I look up at the buildings that line the streets, all of them look pretty run down, the occasional window conceals a curious face looking out to see what these outlanders want in their town, but for the most part the place appears deserted. I look back to my droid slung over the rear cargo panel of the speeder.

"Artee? I hope you're getting all this scanned, we may need it for a tactical briefing later, make sure you have the whole town layout."

We then drive past a strange burnt out ruin in the centre of town, rubble is strewn everywhere, the fact that whatever dissaster caused this destruction seems to have happened quite some time ago, and nobody seems to have been bothered enough to clean up the mess suggests that this place has become something of a ghost town. I key my comlink to Faal's frequency and ask her to fill me in on what happened here.

"Oh that? Ancient history. Jabba just decided one day that this town wasn't big enough for two Hutts, and had Gardulla's Palace bombed, but that was way back when there was still life in this place, back when this was a hub for Podracing and the like. Since Mos Eisley came into its own, there was little need for this place anymore, most people just moved on."

Faal keys off her mike and turns the lead speeder down another street and we head due south again. I then turn to my other passenger.

"Walker, we'll park up the remaining speeders in the south and with you scanning we'll work our way up the town to meet Sergeant Rabid in the middle, should be able to cover the entire town fairly quickly that way. You having any luck getting a more accurate reading out of that thing now we're closer?"

The Lieutenant shakes his head as he fiddles with the dials on his scanning gear.

"Nope, it is better than it was while we were all the way down in Anchorhead, but even at this range I'm only able to assertain that the signal is coming from somewhere in the south of this town, I can't give you much more than that right now, I'm trying to narrow the scan beam, will hopefully get a resolution boost from that, but no promises."

Not what I want to hear right now.

"We're running out of time Lieutenant, Imperial forces could turn up at any moment, and I'd rather we were long gone by then. Just keep at it."

Then as we reach the southern edge of the town my worst fears are realised. Hearing the high pitched whine of sublight engines I park up the landspeeder and look to the sky. Out of the glare of the sun comes the unmistakable silhouette of a Lambda, arcing as it circles the town, most likely gathering tactical data. It then peels off and heads south across the desert.

“Damn, we’re too late! Lt. Twigs, contact Sergeant Rabid, tell him and his troops to hightail it back here, we’ve got trouble headed our way. From fact they haven’t landed in the town I'd say they know we’re here.”

I turn to Faal.

“Alleyah, I need you to take your men, find whatever locals left in the town you can, and evacuate them, take them north into the mountains until this is all over.”

The Twi’lek stands there proud and resolute.

“No, Commander, we shall stay here and fight by your side, you are only 12 men, you’ll need all the help you can get.”

I grab her by the arm and pull her close to me and whisper to her.

“You’re worth more to the Alliance alive, especially if the Empire doesn’t know you. So go. If you like that’s an order. Go!”

She stands there, her jaw locked for a moment as if she is still going to argue, and then turns to her men.

“We’re moving out, off load the gear and let’s gather the locals and get them outta here. Let’s move guys!”

I watch her for a second and then turn my attention back to the dunes to the south, when Walker taps me on the shoulder, and Artee squeals.

"Er, Commander? It gets worse."

My eyes follow where Walker is pointing behind us, and then I spot the two Sentinel class landers just as they speedily pass low overhead, also disapearing off to the south behind the dunes of the desert.

"Damn! Two Sentinels?"

Lt. Walker nods.

"Yep, looks like they were configured for heavy cargo load duty too, which means..."

I finish his sentence for him even as I want to deny his conclusion.

"Walkers."

We'll have the final chapters of this in a few weeks where we'll see the actual battle commence for control of the sleepy town of Mos Espa.

Hopefully this lot has given you some more inspiration to chew over as you commence to write your own tales for the competition.

Good luck Troopers, and we all look forward to reading them.

Free hand.

If you guys are looking for more inspiration before you start writing your epics here are a few more ideas for you to mull over, there are several maps within First Strike which are narratively linked together via their loading screen intel reports, surely a fertile area from which a story could sprout? These reports tell you that Rebel forces fall back from the battle of Mos Espa to the neighbouring settlement of Mos Entha for example, but how do they end up there? The story stretches further to include the skirmish at Bestine.

You've also got the two very different battles that encompass the Rebels' two pronged attempt to take down the Imperial installation on Rhen Var, perhaps an overview of the Rebel plan in it's entirety? Or what would happen to the Rebel strike team should the Rebel armour column fail to keep the Imperial's heavier armour occupied out in the ice plains?

Fertile ground indeed.