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Alleyne

Re: A Spin on the Death Star
replied on: 6/8/2002 9:18:52 AM

Great story. You gave a personality to a faceless person.

Shin_Xavier

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Re: A Spin on the Death Star
replied on: 4/8/2002 9:59:33 PM

Truly magnificent. I wondered how much depth you could cram in with the size of your post but the plot twist near the end coupled with the nostalgia of the event was a master stroke. I loved the way you changed the perspective and showed me something I would have never considered otherwise.

Cheers.

"Nothing is easy, that is why things have worth when you win." An extract from the Tales of Shin Xavier.

Syphol

A Spin on the Death Star
replied on: 3/25/2002 8:58:59 PM

It would have been easy to end his problems. It would have required barely a thought: switch weapons live, aquire target, gently squeeze the trigger. A flash of deadly light. An expanse of gas, quickly dissovled in the all-powerful vacuum of space. An end. A resolution. A finale.
Of all things in this galaxy, it seemed the hardest to accept, the fact that he had to live on in this way. Jockey for the Empire's pure-bred killing machines. Flying in formation, a wing to a wing, nothing more than one of two stylized flying nothings of the singular triad. His counterpart, on the other side of the delta formation, would be beaming right now. Beaming, no less.

Syphol barely twitched his stick, flying tight. Close and tight, the way he was supposed to. Doing otherwise would mean death... and it wouldn't be in anything so glorious as flaming claws of spinning wreckage, but sagging on the cold, inhuman deck beneath that mass of white ridges whipping by in a blur.

For a moment he saw nothing but the huge orange planet hovering above his visible horizon; he flew by instinct. The pale blue moon was no longer eclipsed as he had seen from his quarters, nearly half an hour ago. It was a proud thing standing alone to face certain doom. A part of him smiled at the idea.

And here he was flanking pure black venom incarnate. He covered the other as bidden, because he must, and wished all the while to adjust his sights and blow the other away in a quad-burst of bruning death. The image was deleriously vivid in his mind: turn, aquire, fire. Turn aquire fire.

Fire.

Syphol had to resist this most primal of urges. It was madness, this insane notion. Just thinking it could be enough to find himself dragged away by faceless stormtroopers, slack; debris along the wrecked road marring every vessel the other had per chance touched with his personal brand of malevolence.

So much for skill: the old demon took three volleys to blow apart one of the banshee Y-wings. Syphol flew alongside the vehicle spewing laserbolts, bored to be guarding the one person in the galaxy that would need it the least, and itching to prove that fact fatally and irreversibly incorrect.

Another X-wing gone. Another. An artoo unit was singed and spewed sparks as the modified TIE fighter leading his formation attacked with the tenacity of a Hutt and the sloppiness of a Gran.

Syphol was leaning foward, amazed that the pitching X-wing could possibly avoid certain doom at the hands of living Death when the blast darkened his transperisteel viewport for a heartbeat.

Distantly, he heard a familiar voice. "What?!"
Only then did he notice his HUD, only then did he see the Corellian freighter swooping down on them both.

Startled, he yelped "Look out!" and jerked the stick to port, fatally clipping his master in his hasty bid to face the oncoming attack.

The spin took forever. His cockpit went askew as the inertial dampeners failed to compensate for the sudden jerk, and his head bounced against the inner hull of the cockpit. He would never have time to feel the pain, to truly appreciate the damage that had been done to him in that first moment.

Yavin IV hovored magnificent for the briefest space of time, and the moon hiding the Rebel base stood alone, blue and triumphant.

The last concious thought to pervade his entire being before hitting the trench wall was to wish with all his might that the marauding YT-1300 would find the last of the trio and end the demon's reign beside his devil Emperor.

He should have given in to the urge. Syphol could have been a proud martyr to the galaxy. He would never know that his intended victim would one day martyr himself for a son's love and destroy that very Emperor he once served.

Syphol would never know that in his failure he allowed the galaxy to win in the end.

Submitted for your viewing pleasure, taken from the RP boarsds at the official STar Wars Galaxies site.
___________
Your Friendly Neighborhood Imperial,
-Syphol