Journal of the 501st Narration: Part 2

Transcript

During the rise of the empire, the emperor's home planet of Naboo rapidly established itself as a major irritant. After a number of Naboo's ambassadors were sent home in various states of dismemberment, her newly elected queen broke off diplomatic ties and began exploring military options. Clearly it was time for a regime change, a change that would be effected by the 501st, now under the direct command of Darth Vader.

Her orders were simple, to infiltrate the city, take out their leader, sending a clear signal to the other potential troublemakers in the empire. With the queen eliminated, Naboo quickly fell into line. It was the first time the 501st was called upon to adjust a planet's government, but it wouldn't be the last.

Within months, the 501st gained a well-deserved reputation as Vader's fist. Although the Clone Wars were over, some people never seemed to get the message. The worst case of denial was Geyser Delso, a Genosian separatist who must have somehow escaped Lord Vader's efforts to wipe out the remnants of the CIS.

Lord Vader tracked him to Mustafar and brought us in to finish the job. It seemed like a simple enough mission, but when we saw the fleet of droid ships hovering over the planet, we suddenly realized that Delso's denial mechanisms were a little more dangerous than we had imagined. The slight whiff of nostalgia the 501st had enjoyed fighting the droid fleet over Mustafar had already grown sour by the time we'd established orbital positions.

Now it was time to find out what this was all about. By the time we'd made our way to the molten surface of Mustafar, it was apparent that Delso had been a busy little bug. All by his lonesome, he'd found a previously hidden droid factory, fired it up, and cranked out his own little private army of battle droids.

Needless to say, this got the men of the 501st a bit hot under the helmet, and not just because of all the lava. Truth be told, we'd all had our fill of those gearheads during the war, and we couldn't stump the thought of going through another one. So we blew them up.

Blew up the droids, blew up the factory, damn near blew up the planet. The destruction of the mining facility put an end to any thoughts of a second droid rebellion. For the first time in years, the men of the 501st could relax and get about the business of maintaining an empire rather than building one.

Officially, there never was a clone rebellion on Kamino. Unofficially, approximately twenty years after we were created, a special detachment of the Imperial 501st Legion was dispatched to Kamino with orders to eradicate an army of clones that had been bred to take arms against the Empire. Our mission commander, an expert on the inner workings of Kamino, was a young bounty hunter named Boba Fett.

The bounty hunter left after the battle was over. He said something about tracking down a smuggler on Tatooine. After the Kamino uprising, the Emperor decided that an army of genetically identical soldiers was too susceptible to corruption.

Future troopers would be cloned from a variety of templates. Though the 501st itself remained pure, the rest of the Imperial army gradually became more and more diverse. We never really got used to the new guys.