Whenever I end up in the territory of this Galactic Empire, my life is always on a timer. Without fail, the Empire will always find and attempt to contain me. Am I really so important that such a massive Empire would put so much effort in doing such a thing? I'm not quite sure myself, but I do know the Emperor himself will spare no costs in catching me. 

The current Emperor has been in power for at least a few thousand years now. I highly doubt he'll die anytime soon either. After all, healthcare in a Galactic Empire is no joke! If you're rich, you're basically immortal! 

Well, back to my current predicament...

"Surrender quietly with your hands up!"

Luckily, the soldier reciting this cliché line wasn't talking directly to me, but rather to everyone in this shelter. Well, no one in our group should be stupid enough as to disobey... 

"NEVER!" 

"WE'LL FIGHT TO THE END!" 

My faith in them was returned with the worst case scenario. Now, I'm going to have to survive this skirmish and pray they don't lump me in with these idiots who value their ideals over their life... I feel like I just called myself an idiot. What a scary thought. 

The two groups began their firefight. Laser beams shot left and right and bodies fell with them. The sounds of beams firing and screams in agony were almost in sync. 

When the fighting was over, there were only around a dozen of us huddled in a corner and Imperial soldiers flooding into the shelter.  

To make matters worse, I stood out among this group as the rest of them were just children, and likely now orphans. 

Actually, this development might be quite convenient... 

"Please spare them, they're just children. We won't fight!" I surrendered, acting as a caretaker towards these children. None of them knew me, but they weren't going to mention that now as I was saving their lives. 

After conversing a bit with his group, a certain soldier stepped forward. 

"If you raise your hands and get on your knees, no one will get hurt." 

And so, I motioned for the children to follow their directions as well as doing so myself. Thankfully, these children were smarter than their adult counterparts, or I should say, the corpses now sprawled out on the floor. 

As such, I was taken into custody by the Imperial Army, but luckily my identity was unknown to them.

Imperial Soldier Clement Ashire’s Story:

Our raid on the shelter for non-combatants ended up turning into a skirmish as well, but such a case wasn’t uncommon when dealing with rebel groups. Of course, any real non-combatants would have probably fled or surrendered before the siege on the base even began, knowing resisting was pointless.

Aside from a few nearly dead combatants groaning in pain on the floor, the only survivors of this clash were around a dozen children and one adult male. However, he quickly pleaded we spare them.

"Please spare them, they're just children. We won't fight!"

Even an organization has a few members who aren’t complete morons. Such occurrences appear occasionally, but it’s always nice to see them as they show that not all hope for these people are lost.

We took the children and their ‘caretaker’ into our custody for further questioning. Though, I do dislike how complicated the procedures for this stuff are. The children are probably traumatized after all. Maybe I should file my thoughts to HR and see if they can do anything about it. Well, I sometimes doubt there even is an HR considering how I’ve never gotten a response back from them. They probably only exist in name.

Putting aside those needless worries, we made our way onto the starship and traveled back to base.