Sta.sh
Unjustified
Prologue
On a remote planet of Kalee in the Outer Rim, the Kaleesh race lived in fear of their savage planetary neighbor and the news of war was rumored between clans, but one didn’t worry about the news…well tried not too. He stepped out into the windy outdoors and watched as his people struggle through this hard time. Trade wasn’t the same, for as a whole, they had little to trade with and they depended on Off-world traders for supplies and food.
In his right four-fingered hand, a blaster rifle which was never out of reach for any reason. The worn shoulder strap was stitched and knotted in some spots from the years of used service. The leading general of the Kaleesh army, General Grievous Shakar ran his free hand through the long thick dark Karabbac feather, which waved in the breeze outside his ragged desert turban at the edge of his mumuu-bone mask. His cloths were that of a normal Kaleesh uniform with a bandolier draped across his chest and the full-length of his arms were bandaged as well as half of his shins were too covered, only his hands and balls of his feet were bare, a desert yellow cloak signifying his rank as a Kaleesh general.
Grievous Shakar slung the rifle over his shoulder and started out for a scout tower on the north side of his people’s village. As he walked up the collapsible ramp, the slight wind shifted to a mid-gust and he hastened up to the shaded platform. Two Kaleesh scouts were up there for the two shifts, day and night, distinguishable by the lack of the long campaign cloak and a cloth replaced the mumuu mask. The night scout was curled up, back against the one of four support pole with his rifle close to his chest, asleep. The conscious scout halted, saluted at Grievous and went to wake his companion. Extending his arm, Grievous halted him from waking his sleeping companion.
“Let him rest,” he said lowering his hand back to his side and took the rifle off of his shoulder.
Then a sudden blast bellowed dirt and strands of lush grass mixed with the strong reek of starship exhaust into the face of the now disturbed General Grievous. The once asleep scout was now awake from the abrupt blast and looked around to see nothing. He got to his feet and stretched as he made his way to Grievous’s side, wondering what was going on.
“Sound the alarm, we have to get everyone into cover and get the men ready,” Grievous ordered stepping onto the ramp way, half-turned toward the scouts. “NOW!”
The alarm was given, every women and child hurried inside and the men assembled just out of sight. Grievous watched as his army passed blaster rifle clips and the village shaman marked their masks with Karabbac blood. The bowl came around; Grievous stared at him as he marked his mask, then and check his rifle making sure it was loaded after he was marked and the shaman gave his prayer, blessing everyone there. They all sat in dead silence as the wind toyed with the tails of their turbans and loose cloak flaps. General Grievous peered out to see a star cruiser looming over head, a Huk cruiser. A series of commands were issued, every soldier there understood their part they were commanded to do and in groups of two or three spread out to different positions about the village’s perimeter.
The two scouts in the tower paced, back and forth uneasily, not to pay much attention to the men settling into their appointed spot. Grievous slipped up the ramp and kept a low profile as he made his way up for the cruiser loomed above the village. One scout helped him inside as the other pulled a couple of ties and the ramp collapsed and was drawn up to the platform. Grievous slipped a small hologram device that he picked up on one of the pervious campaigns and in a soft blue light the whole area, within a hundred kilometer radius, appeared. It was a small invasion party of Huk, by Grievous’s standpoint, was highlighted in the soft vibrant blue glow, a good ways off with artillery, and that was going to be a big problem.
He looked to the fading daylight on the horizon and then to the hologram. To get the artillery, it was going to happen at night and whoever spots any of Grievous’s men that person or squad was died on the spot. Then it was decided, the time of attack was that evening and nothing was breaking it.
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Grievous's Homeworld - Kalee
In dreams. Grievous remembered his life….his mortal life on Kalee, and in the aftermath of the Huk War. After all the close calls on battlefields his home system worlds, on Huk worlds, sowing destruction, exterminating as many of them as he could…After all the times he had returned home wounded, bloodied to the bone, surrounded by his wives and offspring, basking in their support – relying on it to recall him to life. After all the brushes with death…to be fatally injured in a shuttle crash. The unfairness, the indignity had cost him more pain than the injuries themselves. To be denied a warrior’s death – as was his due! Floating suspended in bacta, keenly aware that no healing fluid or gamma blade wielded by living being or droid could repair his body. In moments of consciousness: seeing his wives and offspring gazing on his ravaged body from the far side of the permaglass. Offering words of encouragement; prayer for his return to health. He asked himself: could he be content to be a mind in a body without feeling? More, could he abandon a life of combat for a life in which the only battles he fought were with himself? The struggle to endure, to live another day… No. It was beyond him. By then, the Huk War had ended – more accurately had been ended by the Jedi, and the Kaleesh were still reaping the whirlwind. Their world in ruins, their appeals for justice and fair play ignored by the Republic.
Ever on the alert for investment opportunities, members of the InterGalactic Banking Clan had offered Kalee a dubious sort of rescue. They would support the planet financially, assume its staggering debt, if Grievous would agree to serve the clan as an enforcer. Their hailfire weapons were proficient at delivering “
“We can keep you alive,” rail-thin Hill had whispered into Grievous’s unimpaired ear. Others had promised as much, he pictured breathing devices, hover platform, a surround of life-sustaining machines.
But Hill had said: “None of that. You will walk, you will speak, you will retain your memories – your mind.”
“I have my mind,” Grievous had said. “What I lack is a body.”
“Most of your internal organs are damaged beyond repair of the finest surgeons,” Hill had continued “And you will have to surrender even more than you already have. You will no longer know the pleasures of the flesh.”
“Flesh is weak. You need only gaze on me to see that.”
Encouraged by the remark, Hill had talked in glowing terms of the Geonosians: how they had raised Cyborg technology to an art form, and how the blending of living and machine technology was the future.
“Consider the battle droids of the Trade Federation,” Hill had said. “They answer to a brain that is also nothing more than a droid. Protocol droids, astromechs, even assassin droids – all require programming and frequent maintenance.”
Two words had caught Grievous’s attention: battle droids.
“A war is brewing that will call many droids to the front,” Hill had said just loudly enough to be heard. “I am not privy to when it will begin, but when that day comes, the entire galaxy will be involved.”
His interest piqued, Grievous had said: “A war begun by whom? The Banking Clan? The Trade Federation?”
“Someone more powerful.”
“Who?”
“In time, you will meet him. And you will be impressed.”
“Then why does he need me?”
“In every war, there are leaders and there and commanders.”
“A commander of droids.”
“More precisely, a living commander of droids.”
So he had allowed the Geonosians to go on him, constructing a duranium and ceramic shell for what little of him remained. His recuperation had been long and difficult, and coming to terms with his new and in many ways improved self, even longer and more difficult. Only then had he been presented to Count Dooku, and only then his real training begun. From the Geonosians and members of the Techno Union he had already come to understand the inner workings of droids. But from Dooku – Lord Tyranus – he came to understand the inner workings of the Sith. Tyranus himself had trained him in the lightsaber technique. In mere weeks he had surpassed any of Tyranus’s previous students. It helped, of course, to have an indestructible body reminiscent of a Krath wardroid. The ability to tower over most sentient being, crystal circuitry, and four grasping appendages….in dreams he remembered his past life.
But in fact, he was not dreaming, for drams were a product of sleep, and General Grievous did not sleep. He endured instead brief periods of stasis in a pod-like chamber that had been created for him by his body’s builders. While inside that chamber, he sometimes recall what it had felt to live and while inside he was not to be disturbed – unless in the event of inimical circumstances. The chamber was equipped with displays linked to devices that monitored that status of the Invisible Hand. But Grievous was aware of a problem even before the displays told him as much.
Star Wars: Labyrinth of Evil is worth, I read it before reading Revenge of the Sith and get a better sense what is going on, then being confused on what happened between the Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.
It's straight from the book.
I'm glad you like it.
I'm glad...please read on.