Journalism

A 200-meter high skyscraper made of metal, concrete and glass fell after constant bombardment by the New Republic air force. The fall of the building caused a roar and filled hundreds of meters around with dust and debris. New Republic troops were celebrating and New Republic journalists were filming the whole scene.

"So this is the result of the biggest ground battle in the New Republic, heh" said the man, who had the camera built into his eye, recording everything for later to write a juicy report with the video and publish it in the holonet. Journalist permits in battle zones were scarce and he had to get everything monetizable out of this battle.

The woman next to him seemed confused by his comment, she was the chief commentator for the newly created media outlet - New Republic News - not a good or original name, but it worked. The common people called it the NRN.

"I thought the biggest battles were the ones at Kashyyyk and Mandalore?"

The man sighed.

"Those were the wookies and mandalorian battles for liberating themselves that the New Republic has supported. This is different. One of the 16 jewels of the crown in the Outer Rim being conquered by the New Republic? With 600,000 soldiers in a full offensive of the recently centralized army, navy and airforce? This is the first real battle of the New Republic."

"And how is it going? All I see is bombardments and not real battles."

"Well. The New Republic is experimenting. This is the first battle so for now they have secured aerial supremacy and are trying to destroy everything of importance"

"And what was that building that they just destroyed? Didn't seem so important, aside from… you know. How big it is."

"Oh well, it was the Northern Outer Rim Trade Center. With it all the imperial investments and economy in the north will get destroyed. So it is pretty important."

"Will the economy get even more destroyed for the Imperials?"

"Much more"

"Well, I guess the Empire is fucked now. So, do you know the whole strategy?"

"Not even close. For now they seem happy to bomb everything important and then send infantry to secure it. Also it seems the capital battle will be hard. All the Imperial Army is in the city, trying to hold"

"That will not sell well. We need something big to sell"

While both talked in the city three scout troopers moved at maximum speed with an officer. The four were in speeders, one of the scouts had a white flag that all the New Republic soldiers could see from far away. The question of what to do rapidly advanced through the command chain and rapidly went back to the soldiers in the front.

When the scouts and the officer were in range, they were shot at by the NR troops. Hundreds of blaster shots missed but dozens got to their target, the scouts and the officer tried to escape the laser wall that was put in front of them but it was of no use, the amount of firepower that was in that sector of the front was too much to even hope of survival. Their bodies turned into fire from the amount of blasters that shot them for 30 seconds.

The cameraman looked from far away with his modified eye how the scene developed.

"I think we got ourselves our saleable news"

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The commander of the NR in the area looked at a holo map while two members of the NRN walked to him. They were down in a bunker, protected from all possible damage from the exterior.

"What do you need? The attack is going to happen soon. Shouldn't you be in the frontline hoping for a good shot of holo-video?"

Both members of the NRN didn't seem scared from the blunt attitude of the Commander nor his indifference to their status as reporters.

"We have come here to ask why you have refused negotiations with the Empire. They have apparently sent a delegation to negotiate. We do not want to discuss the NR strategy but we think it might be of interest to the people to know how the Army of the NR works in its first real combat of its own."

The Commander looked up and then again to the holomap. He was a man with many scars and while the two journalists didn't know him he was famously known as a guerrilla fighter with 15 years of experience that fought in the mid-rim against the Empire. A veteran of guerilla warfare and now Commander of a NR Army composed of 300,000 soldiers that in this moment surrounded the capital city.

"The local Moff wants to create a safe route and a ceasefire of three days until all the civilians of the city evacuate. We have already refused several times in holo-call and since we jammed the city communications he is now sending representatives to talk about it"

Both journalists nodded. The camera that replaced the eye of the male periodist was recording all this. Not for publishing but for seeing it later. It was more useful than having a tablet around and having to type everything the people he interviewed said.

"Might I ask why you have rejected it?" Asked the woman periodist.

"The moment we accept something like that they can totally and efficiently use the city for guerrilla warfare, meaning that there will be more NR soldier losses. We cannot allow the Empire to have the capacity of destroying their own city in their desperate defense. And if they destroy it anyways in the end you journalists will make sure to record everything and put it to galactic-scale notices. So there is no military reason to allow them to leave the city."

"Understandable," Answered the woman. "But isn't there also the problem that we are bombing civilians? Bombing the Trade Center probably caused many civilian lives to be lost"

The commander just raised his shoulders with indifference.

"They are imperials. If you ask me I don't see why I would care about their civilian losses"

Both journalists nodded and continued the interview through several hours, taking enough content to make an elaborate report of the Commander and puffing him like a hero of the New Republic. They moved from the bunker to the frontline mere minutes before the offensive happened.

"I still have this doubt. Why again do we care so little about their civilian's lives? I remember in some other campaigns there was some relevance in not having civilian casualties. He just seemed not to care" asked the woman.

"Well, Every commander is different, you know. But this is one of the 16 jewels of the Empire in the Outer Rim. These "jewels" are the planets that most have cooperated with the system and have benefited from it. So basically these planets are full of imperialists. And you know what they say. The best imperialist is a dead imperialist. I am pretty sure right now across the rest of the planet there are soldiers executing imperialists. It is a shame I cannot record it. It would be a good part of my collection"

The woman hummed and then continued to walk through the trenches. To their right the city that before was one of the greatest cities of the outer rim now was destroyed. The constant bombardment of the NR airforce left it unrecognizable. No one could say that some days ago this was one of the most beautiful cities.

"They sure are using a lot of bombs, some hours ago there was a city" said the woman.

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Debris and corpses were scattered all over the place. The civilians and the Imperial Army in the city defended until the last men, until the last consequences. Both journalists had seen children take up arms more times than they would have liked to. The new orders from the Commander were to shoot everyone that can handle a gun.

"This will be great news to publish! The Empire using child soldiers!" Said the male journalist with great enthusiasm as he recorded how a child was shooting in their direction. Missing all the shoots, that kid couldn't have been more than 13 years old.

He was rapidly killed by a NR sniper.

Both journalists were having one of the greatest times of their lives. Being directly in the area of combat gave them the best photos and videos. The stories to tell were also magnificent. Of course they knew that the Commander's strategy forced all the civilians to participate in a desperate defense. But who would care? The readers? They would never know. They would read the notice, see a child soldier shooting and say to themselves that the Empire is bad. This battle will ruin the Empire's reputation even more and they were going to get a lot of money with it! It was just the journalist's business.

"Be careful" Said the woman journalist, taking the male from behind and dragging him to a coverture before he was shot by some Imperial soldiers holding a debris position that gave them cover.

"Sorry, it's just that this footage is too good. We will not have an opportunity like this unless the NR army again wants to give us permission to participate. We need all the footage possible!"

"I get it but all of it will be useless if you die here!"

Two NR troopers ignored them and put a bomb into something that before was a wall. They destroyed it with an explosive. They continued to destroy every wall that stopped them from advancing, effectively flanking the Imperial Army position. But the Imperial Soldiers did not ignore this fact. Several Imperial Soldiers waited for the NR soldiers to get out and when the last explosive was set the fire started very fast. In mere minutes more than 100 soldiers both from the NR and the Empire died. But in the end the NR soldiers won the battle and took the position.

"You can pass" Said a small NR officer who was a sergeant. Both journalists nodded and walked through the debris, under the debris there were a lot of civilians smashed to the ground, no life left in their bodies. Only the smell of rot slowly setting and the smell of blood just getting more intense.

"Hold a minute" Said the male journalist, taking a photo of a woman that had a baby in her hands or so it seemed, but half her body and whatever she was holding in her hands were under debris.

"What will be the title of that photo?" Asked the woman.

"If it gets published? The Empire destroys its own city, killing hundreds of thousand of civilians"

"Sounds about right. Let's continue to advance" Answered the woman as she continued walking, following the NR soldiers.

----

A NR soldier smoked as he was sitting on a big chunk of debris. He was tired and his platoon was resting while the reserves were advancing further. The smoke of his cigarette slowly disappeared as it advanced its journey through the air.

Just like life, the smoke at first was very strong and dense but slowly it dissolved itself in the air, disappearing. That was a human life in the end most of the time.

A cry was then heard. The soldier turned around and saw another companion of the platoon crying as he saw some children crushed under the debris of buildings that were destroyed by the airforce.

"What a pussy" Said the soldier, as he stood up and slowly advanced through the debris left in the battle. "You can't stomach a little bit of death?"

"They were civilians! Innocent children!" Shouted the crying soldier.

"They are not innocent. They are Imperial scum and they had to die like Imperial scum."

"How can you say that? How can you see their bodies in the ground, lifeless and say that they deserved it?"

The soldier, a war veteran, smiled.

"Most of this army are soldiers from the guerrilla warfare against the Empire. Our people died in the Imperial's indiscriminate oppression, our families starved to death to benefit other planets. This planet? This planet received all the product of the suffering from the Outer Rim in order to become the "Ideal planet" of the Empire. Do you think any civilian here is innocent? They all were feeding on the suffering of the rest of the galaxy! Their hospitals were financed with the money of those who the Empire killed! Their buildings were constructed with prisoner labour from the people they enslaved! They all participated in the Empire regime!"

"But they are innocent! The newborns, the children. They don't understand anything!"

"They ate the food, used the hospitals, went to learn at the imperial schools, supported the Empire. They all are imperial scum or would turn in to it sooner or later"

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The journalist group looked at the city. They thought it would fall in some days but the Imperial resistance held a strong defensive position. Two months had passed since the start of the battle and the 1st New Republic Army went from 300,000 soldiers to 100,000. It was according to the military understanding of the NR high command considered "Destroyed" but the orders were to continue the offensive. More reinforcements armies came to siege the city but that didn't speed up the process.

Yet, this was the day, the Imperial army finally had run out of ammo and food according to some deserting troops of the Imperial Army.

"What happened to the deserting imperial soldiers?" asked the woman.

"They were executed I think"

"Oh well, they are Imperials I guess, no mercy to the Imperials"

The woman nodded and indicated to the man to follow her. Slowly walking through the debris the amount of dead NR soldiers was incredible. Entire walls of bodies were outside of the city. Waiting their turn to be loaded into the ships and sent to their family members. And if there were no family members they would just throw them out into space.

"Honestly. All this is the Empire's fault" Said the man, the woman stopped and looked back at him.

"What do you mean?"

"They did this, they destroyed millions of planets, trillions of families, they destroyed Alderaan with the Death Star and created a second one to do much more damage and crimes like that. They honestly deserve what is happening to them. I don't think you should feel bad about them"

"I don't feel bad about them!" Answered the woman.

"You do, I see in your eyes that you do. You talk like it doesn't matter but your eyes tell another thing. So hear me when I say this. Every imperial dog deserves this treatment. I would even dare to say that death is too merciful for them, for what they did. They deserve to be tortured and executed. They destroyed our liberty, destroyed freedom and destroyed the Republic. Now we will destroy them. And our duty as journalists is to make sure that the Galaxy knows that we have to do it. To kill al imperialist dogs, to destroy the rotten corpse of the Empire''

"Don't you think they will… retaliate?"

"More than they have already done? I doubt it."

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The NR soldiers ran through what was previously the governing building of the planet. It was destroyed and was almost unrecognizable. The amount of Imperial Soldiers and Stormtroopers dead on the floor was scarring. All of them equipped with improvised melee weapons, from normal knives to spears and improvised explosives, the fanatical last defense of the Empire on this planet was ruthless. But the NR offensive was even more ruthless.

"Advance!" Said a soldier as another 300 soldiers ran through the corpses. They were the fifth wave and all of the waves that came before them were destroyed. The grinding of lives that this building became hadn't changed anything. The NR soldiers morale was at its highest point since the start of the battle.

Behind this wave, the two journalists followed close, recording everything as the battle developed. The last troops of the Empire charging with improvised spears to well-armed NR troops and dying in the process, the Stormtroopers faking that they were dead to explode with semi-improvised suicide belts. Every meter was fought until the last drop of blood.

Yet, the supremacy of having blasters didn't help the NR troops very much, as every meter they advanced three of their troops died. In a moment where they stopped the counting went from 300 soldiers to 100.

"This is the last push! They don't have anywhere more to run. We have won!" Shouted the Captain of the NR army. The cameraman guy recorded everything, the emotional speech of the dead and the fallen. With a scream of war, more at this point like a horde than a professional army, they advanced the last corridors to get to the Governor's bunker.

The sudden blaster fire destroyed the first group of NR soldiers that advanced. The cameraman and the woman journalist that followed rapidly hid themselves after seeing this. The Imperial Army was supposed to be out of ammo!

A weird voice was heard throughout all the corridors, like if a computer broke down.

"Deathtroopers!" Shouted a NR soldier. The cameraman gritted his teeth and looked as he could through his cover to have a view of the Deathtroopers.

10 men in all black armor were holding the last defensive line, they actually had ammo and they didn't seem to even try to surrender like some imperial soldiers did. Although they have never heard of stormtroopers surrendering.

"Surrender and the New Republic will reward you!" Shouted the Captain after half of what was left of his troops died to Deathtrooper blaster fire.

The only answer that came from that was the sound of something flying and then an explosion. They threw a thermobaric grenade to the NR cover, killing most of what was left of them.

"We are fucked" said the journalist as he hid. He looked at his friend and fellow journalist.

"Is it so bad?"

"Deathtroopers, those are the best of the best"

"Did you have recordings of them? It will sell very well!"

"Yes, yes, I do"

"Perfect, we will gain a lot of credits for this footage"

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The male journalist looked at how the tenth wave of troops finally surpassed the Death Troopers defense. The last of the defenders fought in close combat to some NR soldiers. He didn't seem to be bothered by the death and exploding of his companions nor about that of his own death. He only cared about one thing. Using his knife to kill as many NR soldiers as he could. His armor was covered in blood and everytime that someone tried to shoot him he just hid and waited until the soldiers inevitably tried to come closer. Taking advantage of the close combat to kill them even if he didn't have any ammo.

The New Republic forces tried everything. From throwing grenades, to trying to breach the walls but everytime that lonely death trooper outsmarted them ending with more and more NR deaths.

His last stand, though, ended when someone finally had a clear shot of him, killing him with a shot in the head. Yet this did not stop him from killing even more New Republic forces, as his body exploded a second after it fell to the floor. Killing the surrounding soldiers.

The fuel of hatred fueled the soldiers, as they rushed and entered the bunker, in front of them was the Moff and his wife,his son and daughter.

The cameraman rushed through the dead bodies that made small mountains in some parts as he needed to get the recording of how they captured the Moff. When he reached he felt happy they didn't yet execute them.

"Terrorist scum!" Shouted the man, as he watched the camera man and the woman journalist enter the bunker. The son, daughter and wife were in a corner while the man was standing in front of his family, looking at the republicans with hate fueling his eyes.

"I offered you to take civilians out of the city, you refused! I offered a conditional surrender! You refused! I offered an Unconditional surrender! You refused! You are terrorist scum and the Empire will kill you all!" Shouted the man, he was a good looking man of around 40 years. Famous as one of the most benevolent Moffs and known for his successful campaigns of charity, he was a famous Moff around the Empire.

"You are all Imperialists, you all deserve to die" Was the only thing that the officer of the NR said as he raised his weapon. Before he could shoot the Moff, the Moff raised his hand in a military salute.

"Long Live the Empire!"

Then a shot was heard as the body of the man falled to the floor. Death.

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the center of the devastated city, hanging from their legs the entire family of the Moff Stekol Dymlou was dead and the soldiers of the NR threw debris at them. The children and the wife were still alive when hanged but after so many rocks and metal scrap thrown at them they were already dead. The cameraman recorded how the entire family was humiliated by the NR.

"Hey, you cameraman!" Said the Commander of the entire battle. The same one they interviewed a long time ago. "Take a photo of us!" he said as he and many officers and troops walked to the death hanging bodies. Around 200 soldiers and officers were in front of the improvised thing they made to hang the bodies of the Moff family.

The cameraman laughed a little bit and then took the photo, 200 New Republic soldiers and officers smiling as behind laid the Moff and his family bodies.

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Have you heard the news? The last words of the Moff before dying was -Long Live the Empire-" Said a man at his family dinner.

They were on a planet that joined the New Republic as soon as it declared its constitution. Most of the population supported the NR.

"Yes. They did not only oppress the galaxy but they are proud of it. It's thanks to the New Republic army under Ackbar that we can live safely, Isn't it?" Answered the woman. The son, already 17, nodded.

"I was thinking of joining the New Republic Army. I have followed the entire battle. The Imperials are the worst thing that has happened to the galaxy. Did you know they didn't allow the civilians to flee? And later they killed all the civilians who didn't want to fight and those that wanted to, they threw them as bait to the NR army! They also used child soldiers to try to defend the city!"

The father nodded. Truly, the Empire was the most evil thing in the universe. They deserved all that happened to them. One has to think at times like this that in the end, those that support the Empire are evil…

Now that the father remembered, didn't one of his workmates say something in favour of the Empire? That mother fucker, he is a imperialist. After the dinner he will denounce him to the police.

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tanya Degurechaff read the news, she knew personally that Moff from some missions she did in his territory. He was one of the best imperials…

Tanya destroyed the tablet in her hands as yellow veins appeared throughout her whole body. Anger filling her thoughts.

"I am tired" She said as rationality took control over her, throwing away the anger.

"And this is just the start of everything" answered Tanya von Degurechaff.

Author note:

Everytime you think that the NR is exagerating, remember they see the Empire as the URSS soldiers saw the SS

And then apply the same when you think the Empire is exagerating against the NR