This scene takes place on the planet of Ukio, a rebel food production planet.

"Looks like Intel was wrong! This place is swarming with scum," an Imperial private observed.

Lance Corporal Tycho responded, "I heard a quote once it went like this: if you are short on everything but enemy, you are in the combat zone."

"I’d say thats true," a corporal contributed.

The battle was going badly for the Imperial forces trying to capture Ukio. Not only was Imperial Intelligence wrong, it was dead wrong, and the accumulating casualties was a testament to that. There were only ten companies of three hundred men trying to pacify an area on the surface, paving the way for the reinforcements that were to arrive in just a half hour. Imperial Intelligence had said that this area would have little, if any resistance. If one could call five thousand crack Rebel troops just a little resistance, they are just plain crazy. That half hour was going to be hell.

"What else could go wrong? I mean, we’re screwed! We should retreat to the cover of our assault transports. There at least they could open fire and take divert some of the incoming fire towards it. Blaster bolts won’t get through their shields. It would take some heavy firepower to do any damage to it.", a relatively minor lackey whined.

"Well, you just tested fate, NEVER DO THAT!!! The answer to what else can go wrong, look at bearing three-fifty approximately seven hundred meters away. That is a rebel heavy artillery emplacement. We’ve got to hold our ground for the troops following us!. Just be brave for another half hour, and we’ll be out of this, okay?", the commander pleaded. The minor lackey nodded and took a deep breath and started firing at rebel troops that were trying to pin some of the Imperial forces down.

A lieutenant ran over. "How long until reinforcements arrive, sir?"

The commander strained to hear the lieutenant over the sounds of battle. "What?"

The lieutenant repeated himself.

"I’d say around a half hour. When they do their going to land a little over two hundred meters from here, we need to secure that area."

The battle was becoming worse for the stalwart Imperials. A whole company of troops were pinned down in an area where there was very little cover. Many of the troops resorted to using their comrades bodies to block the incoming storm of light. Any soldier that tried to reach any of the other companies was shot almost immediately; an unfortunate messenger, chosen for the unenviable duty of trying to get a message through was hit when he was halfway to his objective. His intestines squirted hot liquid in all directions. This poor young man couldn’t be saved: there were no bacta tanks nearby, and if there were, it wasn’t like the rebels would let a group of the enemy gain any ground. He was only eighteen and a half years old.

The commander twisted away from a blaster bolt. "Sithspit!"

The bolt burned through the chest of an unlucky private. "AAARRRGGHHHH." The corpse twitched for the next ten minutes.

"Sir, I don’t know if we can get to our objective," a young captain fretted.

"We have to, that is where our reinforcements are landing. Put it this way, if we lose, we will have lost five companies, five hundred men in total. They will have lost over a thousand men. It will be a Pyhric victory for them. Try to get the men to gather together at this point, tell them to stay in a loose parade formation."

"Sir, if you are going to do what I think you are, you’re crazy.

"I know that, but we must get those co-ordinates or else our reinforcements will be either captured or shot almost immediately after they leave the transports."

"Understood, sir."

The men on the edges started to pull in towards the middle. They began to get in a formation that resembled a square, but that was difficult when they had to move over their comrades dead and dying bodies. A lieutenant whose legs were ashes and had one of his arms blown off and his flesh burned, screamed to the men to help him. A medic came over and gave him an overdose of morphine. The man died soon after. A corporal started to turn green when he stepped over the corpse of a man whose head had been burned off from eye level on up; he was still twitching madly.

A young lieutenant colonel availed himself to the commander. "My men have found some cover; we took that building over there. We may be able to use it as a staging point for the assault."

"Yes, that would be a good po--," a blaster bolt blew the back of the commanders head off in a spray of blood and gore.

"Sithspit!" This young lieutenant colonel quickly realized that he was the next highest ranking officer, making him the de facto commander. "What do I need to do to capture that landing zone?" An idea hit him. Many casualties would result from this action, but to not execute this idea could mean the the death of the entire assault force.

This lieutenant colonel’s name was Tycho Celchu.

"Forward men! Forward! For the glory of the Empire!," he encouraged his men on.

"CHARGE!!!," came the response from the company commanders around him.

Lt. Col. Tycho Celchu jumped headfirst in the beautiful tapestry of flying colors, his men followed him.

"Forward! Just a little farther! Just a little farther and we will have carried the day!"

The casualties mounted. Soldiers, good soldiers and good friends began falling left and right. This did not even compare to the rebel casualties. Any rebel that was in the way of the rippling ocean of Imperial soldiers was either shot at point blank range, clubbed to death, or trampled.

The company that was pinned down used this as a distraction to charge the rebel pinning them down. None of those rebels survived.

The rebels began to shrink back from the sea of organic matter. The loyal and courageous Imperial soldiers wondered why. What the rebels could hear was a deafeningly deep, resounding, booming, inhuman screams from the approaching Imperail troops. The Imperial troops could not hear this because their own "HUZZAH!" deafened them.

Just seconds after the troops took their objective, ten assault transports were seen making their landing approaches. Three minutes later, five regiments of Imperial troops sprinted down the gang-planks and into the chaotic fray. Thirty minutes later, it was over. The Imperials won a hard-fought victory that was extremely costly.

The next day, Lt. Col. Tycho Celchu floated over the battlefield in a repulsor chair; his leg had been mangled from a dissident blaster bolt, and he had interupted a series of immersions in a portable bacta tank so that he could personally view the field of carnage, the field of death.

"I want these men to be buried where they fell, each with his own headstone with his name, homeworld, and serial number. I would also like to have their date of birth and death to be marked," the lieutenant colonel told his newly appointed aide.

"Including the Rebels, sir?," the aide inquired.

"Including the Rebels."

"But why, sir?"

"They acquited themselves well in the battle. Anyways, if I had fallen in a battle that the Rebels won, that is the way I would like to be treated. Body counts mean only one thing: too many good men died, on both sides. I respect the Rebels’ idealism, but their way of government, if they won, is impractical; it would collapse in months. I am here to keep that from happening. Just because you are fighting an enemy doesn’t mean you have to be barbaric. Always extend them the respect that you yourself would like to be extended if you were in their situation. Remember that, corporal."

"Yes, sir. But what you just said confused me. Doesn’t that mean that you support their view?"

"No, it doesn’t. I just said I respected their point of view, why they act the way they do. It is their belief. I don’t share it, but the way they act shows extreme bravery and courage in the face of torture, death, or mutilation. I respect them and their ideals, but do not support them or their ideals. Do you now understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right, lets have a casualty report."

"Just over five hundred dead and approximately fifteen hundred wounded, sir."

"Two out of every three men were killed or wounded?! Thats an extremely bad casualty rate. All right, state the approximate Rebel casualties."

"A little more than a thousand dead and around two thousand seven hundred wounded. Most of the survivors were captured."

"A fair trade in an unfair game. All right corporal, I need to go back to my superiors and give them a report. You are in charge now. Good luck. I’ll want a report within the next day or two on the casualty counts, etc."

"Of course, sir."