Anbira was born into a working-class home on Thyferra, neither poor nor particularly well off. As the Republic became the Empire, and the galactic call to keep peace and order went beyond the demand for clones, Anbira decided to enlist in the Imperial Academy, primarily because it promised a fund for continued higher education and technical vocation training that would be useful when his term of service was up. He said goodbye to his parents, and traveled to Carida to begin his training and service.
During his academy stint, Anbira was selected for Scout Force Recon, a distinguished specialist group among the Stormtrooper class that demanded physical endurance, skill flexibility, survival skills, and advanced combat training. He passed his qualifications with high marks, was assigned to a combat unit, and deployed to the forests of Felucia, to augment the local Imperial garrison's forces in the task of repelling insurgents, force-sensitive natives, and (it was rumored) Jedi who may yet have escaped Darth Vader's purge.
Anbira spent a year on Felucia pursuing the enemies of the Empire. He spearheaded deep speeder-bike patrols to find hidden Felucian staging grounds, calling coordinates in for TIE Bomber assaults and then helping to mop up the survivors. His unit helped uncover a fifth column group of disgruntled Republican agitators looking to incite rebellion against the Emperor. His unit also fought Jedi, though this was more an issue of a Jedi revealing themselves for barely a moment, badly mauling Scout Recon, and disappearing again into the fungal wilds.
On one such mission, Anbira's squad of scouts was savagely ambushed by the Felucians, and he himself nearly killed when a trap was sprung, destroying his speeder bike and causing him to be thrown free, and knocked unconscious. The near-death crash gave Anbira his distinctive scar over the right side of his face. The Felucians were intent to behead Anbira, as they did with all Imperials they captured. Their hands were stayed by influence from an unnamed Jedi, and instead, the Felucians tended to his wounds, keeping him alive until he had gained strength to break free from a coma. When Anbira awoke, he was alone.
Anbira had no comm systems to reach his Imperial comrades, and he was so deep in the wilderness it made the task of returning to base nearly impossible. He knew Imperial protocol. They would search for survivors for one week. After that, he was missing and presumed dead. The week passed, and Anbira soon began to give up hope that he would make it out of Felucia alive. Everywhere he moved, he could sense he was being tracked by the Felucians, but armed with nothing but a sharpened stick, he was unable to confront the mysterious band of guerrillas. He couldn't understand why they didn't attack him. Not that he lacked any possible threats to his life without them, because he was constantly avoiding carnivorous plants, nexxu, and rancors. Spending his days avoiding predators and finding enough to subsist upon to survive, he was greeted one day by an apparition or a trick of his mind. A ghost of a diminuitive creature with pointed ears and a penchant for strangely parsed sentences. The ghost greeted him simply as Yoda.
Resigned to the fact that he was finally losing his mind, Anbira tried at first to ignore the 'spirit', hoping it would go away. Yoda, it seemed, had infinite patience, reminding him that "Over nine hundred years old, I am. Wait for you a little longer, I can." He warned Anbira of approaching predators, told him his story, and the story of the Jedi. Anbira told the little ghost that he was a soldier of the Empire, tasked to hunt down traitors to the galaxy like the Jedi. Yoda asked him "Believe us to be the enemy, do you?" It was a question Anbira had no real answer for, and the beginning of questioning his entire purpose.
|