"Cleanse the rot."
Quintus had once been among the great arteries of the Outer Rim, a profitable spice highway winding its way toward the Inner Systems like a poisoned vein through the flesh of the galaxy. Freighters heavy with narcotics, contraband, weapons, and desperate souls had passed endlessly through its hyperspace lanes, enriching syndicates, warlords, and corrupt officials alike. Entire worlds along the route had become bloated upon vice and black market wealth, feeding the instability and systemic rot that had helped tear the Galactic Empire apart from within.
To the commanders of the withdrawing Imperial 9th Mechanized Corps, Quintus was an blight on the galaxy.
As the Imperials fractured elsewhere into feuding fiefdoms, breakaway admirals, pirates, and opportunists clawing for scraps of authority, the officers of the 9th remained fanatically devoted to the old doctrine of absolute order. They believed with unwavering conviction that the Core had not fallen because the Galactic Empire had been too cruel, but because it had been too weak, too hesitant. Too willing to allow corruption, sedition, and criminality to metastasize unchecked across the stars.
So when intelligence reports reached the Mechanized Corps of insurgent cells, smuggler sanctuaries, and agitators operating openly upon the worlds of Quintus, there was never any real debate as to the response.
Reprisals were the only natural conclusion, terrible and great reprisals.
The people of Quintus awoke to the thunder of mechanized walkers outside their homes and learned quickly that mercy had not accompanied these strangers.
The stormtrooper became a nightmare once more. White masks staring emotionlessly through smoke and ash. The mechanical rhythm of marching boots echoing through darkened corridors. Children silenced by frightened parents as searchlights swept across apartment windows in the dead of night. Entire generations would grow old remembering the sound of tracked vehicles grinding over broken streets while loudspeakers barked demands for names.
Or they wouldn't grow at all.
