Corellia: Quid Pro Quo

[Delgado Xaanan]

A Selonian. That's great. Just great.

As per usual, it seemed that the Empire had resorted to it's usual tactic: no matter what you are doing, make sure you do it in the most terrifying way possible. A towering and predatory non-human, and a scarred woman who had stepped right out of a horror holo. Delgado had requested resources to resolve his problem, to think it through, to weed out the problem parties and diffuse an already volatile situation before it became worse. The Empire's response was to send two intimidating, battle-scarred boots to come and stomp across everything. Because of course: what better way to stop a rebellion by engaging in more of the brutal activity that inspired your dissidents to rebel in the first place?

That was perhaps the most truly unsettling part of the Corellian Resistance. Since the Battle of Endor, and perhaps even since all the way back at Yavin, the way the Empire perceived the Rebel Alliance had slowly changed. Before they had been scattered cells, barely organised, no more of a threat than the average pirate band. After Yavin though, they'd become organised. They'd slowly evolved from dissident movement to a full fledged enemy. First it had been enemy bases. Then it had been enemy fleets. Soon, there were enemy worlds, and entire enemy sectors. Eventually, that enemy had evolved to the point where it had become the Empire's equal: but before it became an equal in terms of political standing and legitimacy, it had first become an equal in ruthless determination. The Starkiller weapons had proven that the Rebel Alliance was willing to resort to weapons of mass destruction to achieve it's ends, and that was when the Empire had paused, and considered it's situation. That was when the Empire began to wonder: just how far are the rebels really willing to go?

And so, the Treaty. The Empire had struck a deal, to stop the Alliance in their tracks before they took that final step; before they began to create Tarkins and Vaders of their own. Foolishly, they'd allowed themselves to consider their enemy "dealt with", or at least contained until the Empire was able to ready a decisive blow and wipe them out completely.

Delgado knew better. He knew that rebellion was not something you could stamp out. Rebellion, he knew, is endothermic in nature. The more energy you put into crushing it, the hotter it becomes. And the Empire had not stopped pushing, not stopped provoking, not stopped pouring more and more energy into that endothermic process, and look what had happened. The Alliance was contained yes, but the Rebels were not. They had flocked to Corellia, rallied behind continued resistance to the force and the principles they had opposed. And because of that provocation, these Resistance fighters had taken the final step, resorting to the same Tarkin Doctrine terror tactics that the Empire resorted to so frequently. The Resistance was terrifying, because it was what an Imperial would have done. The fire of rebellion on Corellia burned in the shape of an Imperial wheel.

So how did the Empire respond? The only way it knew how: trying to extinguish the flames with kerosene.

"In a manner," Delgado conceded; if this was the answer to his request, then he had made the classic mistake of not being careful of what he wished for. "I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage: the communique from the Knight-General informed me that he would be sending forces to Corellia, but it didn't go so far as to mention any names."