Guardian Abandoned

The Crew

"I yield!" I stated clearly and loudly as the blast doors opened. Inside, three blasters were aimed directly at me, then quickly lowered. "Sir!" The youngest of them exclaimed. He was not quite a boy, but hardly a man. Average in size, black of hair which was nearly tied back in a bun, and quick to stand at attention, he clearly had been taken by surprise by my appearing. Though he had his helmet removed, his armor was that of an assault tank pilot, crudely taped to the top of his shoulder was a playing card with the number 7 on it.
Beside him stood a Mirialan girl of roughly the same height. Her face was tattooed with a pattern of diamonds running down each cheek, the dark ink stood out against the light green hue of her skin. Another tattoo started just below her jawline on the left side, again a pattern of diamonds that seemed to have continued down her arm and onto her hand, finally ending at her palm. Despite not wearing her full set of armor, she appeared to be wearing the standard body glove for a stormtrooper. Her black hair was short, well maintained, she clearly hadn't worn her helmet in a few days. The Mirialan people valued structure and order above all else, the chaos of recent events must have deeply thrown her off. She would take well to orders though, she may be of use.
The third blaster was wielded by a towering human male, nearly two and a half meters tall, his imposing figure seemed to be exactly what the Emperor had in mind for intimidating the Rebels into submission. His face was stoic, lacking emotion, and had a scar that crossed from his left eyebrow across his nose and down past his mouth. It was poorly stitched together, clearly done by hand as opposed to a medical droid, the red lines of infection had made their way along the gash getting progressively worse the lower down they traveled. His eyes seemed incapable of housing empathy, he was the ideal candidate for the Death Trooper program. His armor had a large blaster burn across the chest plate which had been poorly covered with tape to hold the plastoid composite together.
In the worst shape, certainly unable to hold a blaster, was the assault tank commander laying on the ground in the back of the bunker. Slumped over and holding a hand on his side, his head was bandaged and dried blood covered most of his face. He did not acknowledge my presence, he merely sat there. It seemed as if his only focus was on staying alive for just another minute, holding on long enough for help to come. His heavy breathing could be heard permeating the air at all times. On the rare occasion that the Emperor requested my presence on Mustafar at Darth Vader's side, I would watch over him as he meditated in his bacta chamber. The commander's labored breathing sounded almost as painful as Vader's. He clearly did not have much time left to live. He was useless to me.
"Pilot, report." I said as they lowered their blasters.
"Sir," he started, the exhaustion in his voice was evident. "We've been stuck here for eight days now. We helped Inferno Squad to secure some TIE fighters but they left us behind without a pot to piss in–" he cleared his throat and straightened himself up, embarrassed by his breaking of protocol. "My apologies, sir. We've been doing our best to survive and keep it together, but Commander Dumas took a pretty bad hit early on. The moon is covered with insurgents. The Alliance has basically made this moon their second base of operations. We haven't been able to reach anyone, not even other troopers on the ground. We have no idea if we're the last of the Empire or not." He seemed broken by saying these words aloud. I almost felt sorry for him, but in situations such as these, we needed to keep it together more than ever.
"What are your names and operating numbers?" I asked, taking in all the information. Had it really been eight days since the destruction of the Death Star? I had only been gone for ten.
"IC-734, my name is Bestil Burr." The young pilot said. "My commander is IC-103, his name is Graf Spondor."
The Mirialan spoke up next. "My name is Penni Leeari, designation HK-331. I was designated a support unit for their assault tank, sir."
The tall one finally spoke. "TK-1293. Vold."
These troopers had clearly been shaken by the events of the past week, they required the strong hand of the Empire to guide them back to security. I cleared my throat.
"Grab your things, pull yourselves together, and get me a map of the area. We're going to retake the base, snuff out the Rebels, and demonstrate the strength of the Empire. The Beast is wounded, but we are far from dead."