By Jonathon David Hawkins
The glare of mortar fire filled the night sky as the dull roar of the machineries of destruction and the thudding of the psycho-cannons caused the very air to vibrate as if in the midst of a death rattle. The smell of ozone and scorched flesh - burned and melted by laser fire - blended with the scream of rockets and the agonized death cries of dying infantrymen. The once green fields had been blackened and burned by this orgy of destruction, forever marred by this symphony of death and slaughter.
Slowly the Rebel forces pushed back the outnumbered Imperial troops. They marched across the surface of the planet, a human scythe cutting down all the minions of the Emperor who stood in its way. No quarter was given by the Rebels, for they knew that there would be no mercy shown unto them were the Empire been winning the conflict. Such had been proven in battle after losing battle with the Imperial butchers. But for this once, just this once, it appeared that the righteous would win the day. Then, when victory seemed secure, it arrived.
The dark salvation of the Empire swooped down from the sky like a bloated metallic angel of death. The back-thrusters of the Methuselah Class Warship ignited the energy coils of crippled tanks and its crushing landing gear ground man and machine - Rebel and Imperial alike - beneath them. The concrete field that the cyclopean death-bird alighted upon cracked and buckled beneath the load that it was forced to bear.
On the suddenly hushed battlefield, pneumatics could be heard to hiss as a boarding ramp slowly lowered, struggling to bear its own massive weight. And then, from the belly of the great star-faring leviathan, came forth into the world of Man the greatest weapon in the Empire's world-shattering arsenals: a thing of such inhuman coldness and cruel power that whole armies could be routed merely by the whispered rumor of its approach. It stalked slowly down the lamp and stood before the now silent battlefield, causing manic terror in all that beheld it. The most feared being in all the galaxies walked among them...
The cruel and capricious overlord surveyed the carnage that lay before her, the burned and ulcerous sore that was the battlefield. A smear of disgust spread across her jowled face as she surveyed the Imperial forces that had been in the midst of a retreat. A hush hung over the once riotous battlefield like a deathly halo of unsound as Darth Drolen cleared her throat. The Rebels steeled themselves for the terrible assault that was to come. And then it spoke...
"Today, class, we will be discussing the importance of gawds and gawdesses in the Greek tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis and how it corresponds to..." As one, the Rebel warriors clutched their heads in agony and let slip a banshee wail of pain and terror as Darth Drolen launched into a long and windy discourse, creating an environment of such mind crushing boredom that their synapses fused and blood poured out from their burning ears.
One valiant soldier, his will hardened by years of public education, brought his plasma rifle to bear and tightened his finger upon the trigger. But before the energy blast could be released, Darth Drolen broke off into a deadly tangent and launched a fatal volley of childhood anecdotes at the brave warrior. His eyes rolled back in his skull as his cerebral cortex imploded under the sheer monotony of that terrible soliloquy. The Rebel's body fell into twitching heap - never to rise again.
Darth Drolen gazed out upon her handiwork and pondered. The dead Rebels lay before her like so many crushed insects. Satisfied, she turned and returned to the dark depths of the warship to prepare her lesson plans for future battles.