[SD.net EU database] Battlefront Twilight Company

[DarthPooky]

Donning her uniform always calmed her. She'd learned to dress and attach its components in less than a minute, but she preferred to go slowly, first stripping down and removing, one by one, the garments of Thara Nyende of Sullust and stowing them in the locker. Next, she pulled on her new skin-a tough black body glove that sealed itself as she climbed in, too hot to be comfortable until the smart material adjusted to her body heat and the temperature of the room.
She slid her feet into her white synth-leather boots and then-always left first, then fight-snapped her plastoid greaves onto her legs. The soft click and hum of mechanisms assured her she'd attached the pieces correctly, and their perfect sculpt felt far more natural than anything she could buy as a civilian. Belt and crotch plate came next, then the torso piece-locked into the belt, finally making her feel clothed.
Shoulders, arms, and gloves came after the torso. Most days, she'd already forgotten her ordinary troubles by this point. Sometimes she noticed her breathing had steadied, her muscle tension drained into the support of the bodysuit and plastoid. She could have attached the arm sections faster with the help of a droid or a colleague, but this was her ritual. She liked doing it alone.
Finally, the helmet.
She took it from its place in the locker and lowered it onto her head. For an instant, the was in total darkness. Then it clicked into place, the lenses polarized, and the heads-up display blinked to life. Targeting diagnostics cycled over her view of the locker room, power levels and environmental readings blinking at the corners of her eyesight.
Like that, Thara Nyende faded into the background. A stronger woman, a better woman, stepped into place to do her duty.
She was SP-475 of the Imperial Ninety-Seventh Stormtrooper Legion.

WOW good description of StormTrooper armor.

[Balrog]

Again Pooky beats me to the punch...

Anyways this was definitely one of the better of the new canon EU books; a breath of fresh air even compared to the last couple. The writing was even-paced and flowed naturally, the characters relatable and engaging. The plot, which follows the guerilla campaign of a Rebel Alliance infantry company, was interesting and (though I hate to use this overused word) 'subverted' a few expected tropes and clichés which have plagued previous EU books. It touches on a few pivotal moments, especially the Battle of Hoth, and we do see some of the classic crew, but instead of the characters intruding on the action they play peripheral roles. This not only helps expand the scope of events rather than contract but avoids the sort of cringe-worthiness of previous attempts. I will be loath to try and spoil anything of the story in these quotes, since I do highly recommend going out and buying this book.

I will have more quotes later but for now this should do with explaining the situation and setting the mood for the book:

Eighteen months earlier, the Rebel Alliance's Sixty-First Mobile Infantry - commonly known as Twilight Company - had joined the push into the galactic Mid Rim. The operation was among the largest the Rebellion had ever fielded against the Empire, involving thousands of starships, hundreds of battle groups, and dozens of worlds. In the wake of the Rebellion's victory against the Empire's planet-burning Death Star battle station, High Command had believed the time was right to move from the fringes of Imperial territory toward the population centers.

Twilight Company had fought in the factory-deserts of Phorsa Gedd and taken the Ducal Palace of Bamayar. It had established beachheads for rebel hovertanks and erected bases from tarps and sheet metal. Namir had seen soldiers lose limbs and go weeks without proper treatment. He'd trained teams to construct makeshift bayonets when blaster power packs ran low. He'd set fire to cities and watched the Empire do the same. He'd left friends behind on broken worlds, knowing he'd never see them again.

On planet after planet, Twilight had fought. Battles were won and battles were lost, and Namir stopped keeping score. Twilight remained at the Rebellion's vanguard, forging ahead of the bulk of the armada, until word came down from High Command nine months in: The fleet was overstretched. There was to be no further advance - only defense of the newly claimed territories.

Not long after that, the retreat began.

Twilight Company had become the rear guard of a massive withdrawal. It deployed to worlds it had helped capture mere months earlier and evacuated the bases it had built. It extracted the Rebellion's heroes and generals and pointed the way home. It marched over the graves of its own dead soldiers. Some of the company lost hope. Some became angry.

No one wanted to go back.

[FTeik]

" The operation was among the largest the Rebellion had ever fielded against the Empire, involving thousands of starships, hundreds of battle groups, and dozens of worlds. In the wake of the Rebellion's victory against the Empire's planet-burning Death Star battle station, High Command had believed the time was right to move from the fringes of Imperial territory toward the population centers."

Huh, what happened to "imperial forces have driven the rebels out of their base on Yavin" or "while the Imperial Starfleet is spread over the entire galaxy trying to engage us"?

[Balrog]

Huh, what happened to "imperial forces have driven the rebels out of their base on Yavin" or "while the Imperial Starfleet is spread over the entire galaxy trying to engage us"?

The "spread out trying to engage us" takes place later, but according IIRC to one of the comics the Rebels were forced to flee Yavin shortly after the DS1 blew.

Anyways first batch:

Under the direction of the Emperor and Darth Vader, an army of highly trained, single-minded stormtroopers quashes dissent and destroys resistance.

Unlike in Rebels, the stormies in this book are not the Keystone Kops' distant cousins.

Jerky movements drew Namir's attention back to the artilleryman. Behind the stormtrooper stood Gadren, both sets of arms gripping and lifting his foe. Human limbs flailed, and the missile launcher fell to the ground. White armor seemed to crumple in the alien's hands.

Besalisks are strong enough to crush stormie armor.

In Namir's experience, what the Galactic Empire didn't name to inspire terror - its stormtrooper legions, its Star Destroyer battleships - it tried to render as drab as possible.

Star Destroyers labeled as battleships. Admittedly, Namir is someone who has only recently been "uplifted" into galactic society, so his perspective may be a bit skewed, but such a categorization would not be that inaccurate given what they can do.

Open recruitments were technically against Rebel Alliance security policy, but they were a Twilight Company tradition and the captain was insistent the practice continue.

Officially, the Rebels are a bit more discriminatory against who they let in the club, but obviously that's going to be different between some units.

"Mouse droid rolled out through a side entrance half an hour ago," Sergeant Fektrin said. "We figured it was rigged to blow. Turned out clean..."

Imps using suicide droids. No indication on whether they tell them there's 72 virgins waiting for them in droid-heaven.

The sentry on patrol was less than five meters away, and Namir felt his guts clench when they spotted each other. An Imperial stormtrooper. The trooper was still turning to face him - Namir had time to close the distance - but the stun baton would be useless against that white armor.
...
Namir raised his shoulder as he charged; he slammed into the stormtrooper and spun him to face the stairwell. Now at the trooper's back, Namir clung to the armor's cool surface and tried to pin the man's arms, prevent him from getting off even one shot with the blaster...

The stormtrooper reacted swiftly, competently. He threw his head back, grazed Namir's scalp where Namir's abandoned helmet should have protected him. If Namir had been standing straight instead of bending his knees, he would have taken the hit between the eyes.

Stormtrooper armor is immune to stun batons. And I thought it notable to include a description of a stormtrooper doing something competent.

Gently, he peeled back Charmer's hands and examined his right hip. The material of his pants was scorched through, the fibers melted into blackened skin. The injury wasn't fatal, but it had to hurt and Charmer wouldn't be walking out of there.

Rebel trooper takes a blaster bolt to the hip.

When your Rebellion started encroaching on the Mid Rim, the Emperor set his dog loose. You heard about the deaths of Moff Coovern and Minister Khemt?"

"Tragic accidents, as I recall," Howl said.

"According to my sources, both died at the hands of Darth Vader. Emperor Palpatine decided that incompetence at the highest ranks was to blame for the destruction of his Death Star, and from there began a culling.

"There were other deaths, less public," she added with a shrug.

The first Death Star claimed a few more people than we saw on-screen, but interestingly these were kept "quiet" rather than making a public display of the executions. Presumably for PR reasons.

"Find a friend to take you to the weapon range, learn how to use the DLT-20A. A rifle isn't a pistol - it's got more kick and it'll burn your face off if you hold it too close."

Rebels making due with Clone Wars weapons, and a note on the type of waste heat they give off.

Ajax had joined Twilight after the obliteration of the Rebellion's Thirty-Second Infantry. He'd been one of five survivors among four hundred dead, and he still proudly wore the Thirty-Second's "Bleeding Roughnecks" badge.

Given size of a Rebel infantry company. Presumably Twilight is of a similar size, though no exact headcount is ever given.

He pulled his shirt up to half shield his face and wrapped his hands in the ends of his sleeves. The fabric was, in theory, fire-resistant; in the field, he'd seen combat outfits fuse to men and women's skin before it caught flame - not strictly comforting, but proof of durability.

Rebel trooper outfits described as fire-proof.

The stormtroopers fell in behind Tabor and the ensign as they braved the depths of the ship. Tabor had served aboard Star Destroyers even before they'd earned the name - during the darkest days of the Republic, when shipwrights used to building merchant vessels and gilded yachts had scrambled to learn the arts of war. He'd seen the ships evolve from overwrought behemoths barely able to power their frames to the greatest weapons in the Imperial fleet, each capable of transporting thousands of soldiers or laying waste to continents and orbital platforms. The Herald was one of the later designs, postdating Tabor's active service; though he knew its specifications, he didn't recognize the high-pitched hum of its engines or the droids that scurried among its data terminals.

Imperial Star Destroyers firepower description, "laying waste to continents" sounds sufficiently powerful to suggest compliance with previous calcs while still being sufficiently vague enough to avoid giving out hard numbers.

[Adam Reynolds]

Imps using suicide droids. No indication on whether they tell them there's 72 virgins waiting for them in droid-heaven.

Given SW level AI, missiles should be droids in their own right. The old Holonet news articles even referenced this idea with a story about droids rights activists accidentally blowing themselves up when attempting to release droid brains from a missile factory.

Imperial Star Destroyers firepower description, "laying waste to continents" sounds sufficiently powerful to suggest compliance with previous calcs while still being sufficiently vague enough to avoid giving out hard numbers.

Frankly that is what the EU should stick to. Even for things like distances. Giving concrete numbers tends to lead to problems more often than not(as frequently occured in Star Trek).

[Balrog]

According to Howl's briefing, Coyerti was one of the Empire's military research outposts - a planet so rich in plant and animal life that it served as the perfect testing and development ground for biological weapons. On Coyerti, the Empire regularly deployed everything from neurotoxins to defoliants, manufacturing the most virulent poisons on-site for shipment across the galaxy and leaving Coyerti itself a rotting morass of half-dead trees and composting debris.

Imp bioweapon research, pretty self-explanatory.

That afternoon, Brand and Namir refilled their canteens from a murky creek while Gadren and Roach kept watch. Sterilization pills would make the water safe to drink, but only after the canteens filtered out any solids. Namir stared at the container in his hand, waiting for it to click into readiness.

Again self-explanatory, an example of survival gear in a galaxy far, far away.

On the third morning of the Coyerti campaign, Namir checked the portable satellite uplink for coded updates from the front. He received only a set of coordinates and a four-word message that, decrypted, read: AT-ST SEEK AND DESTROY.

Gadren took inventory of the squad's weaponry while Roach and Namir packed up camp and Brand kept watch. "Three grenades," Gadren told Namir afterward. "Together, they might take down a walker."
...
The squad's first engagement was a disaster. Gadren threw his grenade too hard against the vehicle's shell and sent it bouncing away.
...
Roach managed to lob a grenade close enough to its spindly legs to visibly damage its mechanisms.

But the machine kept walking and incinerating trees. If the jungle hadn't been so humid, it all would have burned.

AT-STs are a bit harder to take down when you don't have heavy weapons (or giant log traps).

Inside, thick white fog sprayed from ventilators. "Neutralizer gas," Brand said. "Seen it before. Puts out chemical fires, liquefies toxic gases for cleanup. Mostly safe. Try not to get a lungful."

Example of safety measures at Imperial bioweapons refinery.

There would be no attepts at communication; if they tried to send a message through the satellite uplink, odds were the Imperials would detect the signal.

Yes, the Imperial do practice things like SIGINT.

M2-M5 was waving its claw in front of a sealed hatch. A green light on one of the droid's instruments turned red. "You see?" it said. "That indicates a hypermatter particle leak. The damage is at the microscopic level, likely localized to one of several hundred radiation refractors in the Thunderstrike. It is not enough to impact efficiency - but it could leave a trail for [someone] to follow."

Leaky hyperdrives provide one method of tracking a ship which has escaped to hyperspace.

The Redhurne system was a charnel house adrift with the corpses of planets. Its sun had gone supernova centuries earlier, burning worlds to cinders; now no sign remained on those planets' ravaged surfaces of life or civilization. The remnant of the Redhurne star, a collapsed post-nova fragment that glowed white with seething intensity, exuded radiation deadly to any unshielded creature.

But Redhurne was not empty. When the planets of the inner system had cracked open, their cores had been exposed to the star's toxic rays and been transmuted into exotic new materials - the building blocks of hypermater fuel. Thus, in the waning days of the Republic, Redhurne had become host to parasites: scavengins drones that crawled across its planets and carried their bounty of volatile minerals and gases to orbital mining stations operated by skeleton crews.

The source of where hypermatter comes from. Don't recall if this is similar to how it was in the old EU.

He'd never liked spending time on the bridge; when he was elsewhere on the ship, he didn't have to think about how it worked, about the mechanics at play and the naval officers who'd learned the difference between acceleration compensators and null quantum field generators...

Confirmation that acceleration compensators are still a thing in SW, and probably a necessary part of their ability to achieve their impressive acceleration feats.

As if a countdown had reached zero, the Thunderstrike's boarding pods shot free towards the freighter. Each had been adapted from an escape pod - capsules originally designed to save lives - by trading their maneuverability and fuel storage for hardiness and launch power; by reinforcing them further; and by equipping them with magnetic grapples and laserdrills. Each pod carried a squad of Twilight Company troops, rattled and crammed together with only minutes' worth of air.

Undoubtable the Imperials have their own version of the boarding pod, though most likely it's purpose-built rather than re-purposed.

"The shield generators," Chalis said. "They're right next to the oxygen units, and they overheat under stress. That's why it's summer in here."

Interesting glimpse at how shield generators work. Obviously working equipment produces waste heat, but they can have adverse environmental effects, depending on their positioning within a ship of course.

"Half the sections in this ship," she snapped, "can be opened to space or flooded with toxic gas. I'd rather avoid a preventable death."

Some of the defensive measures available to an Imperial freighter.

Whenever Namir taught stormtrooper cadets - cadets who'd abandoned their units, reason, and steady pay to become Twilight Company fresh meat; cadets who, nine times out of ten, expected to become heroes of democracy and saviors of the weak instead of corpses abandoned on the battlefield - he had to teach them to fight alone. Or close enough, because even soldiers in a two-person fire team or a four-person squad certainly felt alone when outnumbered a hundred times over.

Fighting alone meant guerrilla tactics and dirty tricks instead of formations and shield domes and air support. It meant setting death traps and shooting people from behind and slitting their throats while they slept. It meant - as Namir recalled being told by one recruit days before she abandoned the company - performing acts that felt more like murder than war.

A comparison on the difference between how the Rebels and Imperials fight

[Balrog]

SP-475 resisted the urge to pull Cobalt Front data onto her helment's display.

Stormie helmets can retrieve information, presumably from a friendly database.

Planet Hoth
Eleven Days Before Plan Kay One Zero

Each chapter starts with a location and timestamp like the one above, which varies depending on the plot (i.e. "X Years After the Clone Wars"). This date represents the point when certain members of Twilight Company reach Hoth, and will become important later.

The men and women posted at the base were less familiar. Their clothes and combat gear were a grade above anything Twilight had ever possessed, both in quality and uniformity: When the quartermaster handed Namir an A280 combat rifle before a patrol, Namir stroked the heavy barrel with something close to awe. Bundled in a thermal protective jacket and polarized goggles, Namir was nearly as faceless and unrecognizable as a stormtrooper. With that uniformity and orderliness came an emphasis on the importance of rank and hierarchy; it reminded him of stories Charmer had told about the Imperial Academy, and on his second day he learned why.

"Probably a third of the personnel here were Imperial cadets before defecting," a young man - Namir thought he'd introduced himself as Kryndal, though he hadn't been paying close attention - explained.

An interesting difference between Alliance units far out "in the field" and those which operate more regularly around Alliance High Command.

Kryndal kept talking. "Maybe another third of us - some of the cadets, too - went through Alliance Special Forces training. Four months of misery, but they were the most important ones of my life. You want to learn how to use an antique slugthrower, disarm a proximity mine, or rappel off a ray shield, I recommend it."

Interestingly he talks about rappelling off ray shields, something I don't think we've ever seen before. I would guess this would only work on the ray shields which don't A)just let physical objects pass right through and/or B) don't kill people touching them, and part of the training may be to recognize the difference.

[quote="Ch12 Pg155]He opened his mouth to respond, not sure what he was going to say, when a rebel soldier burst into the room half out of breath. She straightened and saluted as Howl and Chalis turned toward her.

"The Empire's found us," she said. "We're starting plan kay one zero. Total evacuation."[/quote]

Planet Hoth
Zero Days Before Plan Kay One Zero

The preparations for evacuation went swiftly. Echo Base was built to be abandoned - its designers had known the Empire would find it eventually, just as the Empire had located Alliance bases on Yavin 4 and Dantooine. All personnel had been assigned emergency transports long ago. When the alert came down, rebel troops began loading equipment and purging data with precision instilled by a hundred drills.

An Imperial probe droid had been the rebels' only warning. Scouts had found the machine floating through the icy wastes, broadcasting a signal to its distant masters. Whether the Empire would come in force or send additional probes first was anyone's guess, but the base was compromised and an attack would come.

The first passage are the last sentences of chapter twelve, with the second one the start of the next chapter which returns to Hoth. It's also the chapter during which the Battle of Hoth starts, though it will proceed in additional chapters (all of which will have the same Zero Days labels, so instead of covering multiple days each covers a much smaller slice of a single day). This means there was a very short time between when the probe droid was blown up and Imperial forces arrived, a day at most, which like previous examples suggests an incredibly fast FTL speed for hyperdrive.

Perimeter Outpost Delta stood far to the northwest of Echo Base, a hundred meters outside the base's energy shield and barely within comm range when the weather was clear. It consisted of a three-person laser turret, a hand-dug trench in the ice, and a handful of light artillery emplacements. It was the sort of outpost Twilight might have taken in under a minute during a well-planned raid; against anything the Empire might field, it was doomed to obliteration.

But what couldn't be stopped could still be slowed.

Example of the outer defenses of Echo Base.

A fleet of Star Destroyers? Namir had seent he massive ships before - great, wedge-shaped dreadnoughts that dwarfed the Thunderstrike - but never more than one at a time. He'd witness a single Star Destroyer bombard a city into a crater of steaming sludge; seen skyscrapers melt and stone burn. One Star Destroyer had been reason enough for Twilight to abandon a planet.

Besides using another battleship-related term to describe Star Destroyers, another description of the firepower of these massive ships. Depending on how you define a city (and in Star Wars they can get pretty large), you can easily reach some of the more impressive calcs floating around out there.

Beak saved him from responding, tapping Roja on the shoulder and pointing him south. A moment later, the sky shimmered like a mirage. Then the effect disappeared.

"Energy shield's at full power," Beak said. "That thing can hold against bombardment long enough. Now the Imps have to come down."

Except for the moment they turn on, Echo Base's shields are of the invisible variety, with no visual indication of their condition.

Namir, Roja and Beak passed a pair of macrobinoculars among themselves, scanning the horizon beyond the white snowdrifts and watched the cloud-streaked sky. Roja saw the ships first - just black specks impossibly high above, drifting down like snowflakes. Through the macrobinoculars' magnification, Namir saw that each vessel vore an immense, solid metal form on the underside of its hull.

"Gozanti cruisers," Beak said, when he took the macrobinoculars back. "They're bringing walkers."

"You sure?" Namir asked.

"Clamped onto the undercarriage. Only thing it could be."

I recall in the old EU there'd been specific AT-AT transporters which were used to bring down walkers, but now at least they apparently just strap them to the undersides of other ships (though presumably in some sort of protective shell).

Outpost Beta was the first sentry post destroyed, annihilated in half a dozen laser blasts from the mandible-like cannons of an Imperial walker. Namir saw flames through the macrobinoculars, red and orange against white snow. As the walker trundled forward, the ground flashed blue against its footpads - proximity mines planted by Outpost Beta personnel, utterly impotent against the walker's mass.

It should have been horrifying - and it was, in its way. The enemy outnumbered the rebels and had a massive technological advantage. According to Roja, none of the rebel ground artillery could penetrate the walkers' armor - at best, precise, targeted bursts might disable the machines' weapons, but the piston-driven crush of their feet would be no less lethal to organic targets.

The start of the Battle of Hoth, the (ineffectual) use of mines by the Rebels and stated immunity of AT-AT armor, and the description of piston-driven walker legs?

Outpost Delta was on the western edge of the walkers' projected path. There were possibilities there: If the walkers ignored the outpost's threat, Namir's troops might be able to flank the machines as they passed. He ran through the scenarios as he watched his breath steam. Could there be chinks in the walkers' armor, on the sides or rear or undercarriage? Could his squad act as spotters or give covering fire for the rebel air support?
...
The woman wasn't finished. "The bad news, sir, is that the Empire's sent recon forces fanning out. Troops are heading this way."

Of course. The Empire's commanders weren't stupid. They wouldn't let anyone flank the walkers if they could avoid it.

Relative position of Outpost Delta and another example of the Imperials not acting like damn fools.

The enemy scout force consisted of a pair of floating gunnery platforms and an AT-ST escort. Each platform carried half a dozen stormtroopers wearing armor Namir hadn't seen before, stark white and almost invisible against the snow. They weren't skeletons; they were ghosts. And, he suspected, better equipped for the weather than he was.

A new Imperial vessel, some type of repulsorlift carrier. No indication what type of weapons they carry.

The rebel snowspeeders were barely hindering the walkers. Not one AT-AT had been disabled by the time the fight at Outpost Delta finished, and the bulk of the Imperial forces had already progressed south past the outpost toward Echo Base.
...
About a kilometer from the outpost, the three found a wheeled Imperial combat transport apparently abandoned in the snow. Broad scorch marks on its armored sides suggested it had been hit by cannon or snowspeeder fire, but when Roja climbed aboard he had it working again in minutes.
...
The wheeled transport - Roja called it a Juggernaut - raced over abandoned trenches with a sickening jolt, undeterred and unharmed.

Good ol' Juggernauts were on Hoth, though which model and in what numbers isn't indicated, and unlike the AT-AT their armor can be punched through by Rebel artillery.

"Most of the transports made it out, but that shield's going down any second. Last word from the command center was to fall back and finish evac - all troops, all positions."

No point staying for a losing battle, Namir thought. But one part troubled him. "What do you mean, last word?"

"Walker took a few shots at the base. We think command got it."

Despite its buried nature, a walker's cannons can still cause significant damage to Echo Base.

"Those aren't just stormtroopers," she said. "They're from the Five-Oh-First Legion. Darth Vader's personal legion."

Confirmation the 501st was on Hoth.

[Adam Reynolds]

From what I see here, this seems to be taking the content of the tech books and making it canon in a narrative fashion. Just in time to serve as a tie in for the games.

[Balrog]

Some further updates, fair warning there could be some minor spoilers here on out, but I will try my best to limit the damage.

He looked back to the corridor. The figure in black raised a hand as a crimson bolt flashed toward him. The bolt hit his hand and bounced off like a tossed pebble, striking the corridor wall and sending flakes of ice crumbling to the floor.

"Force field!" Namir called.

He'd never seen one built into armor before. Yet force fields could be broken.

Sufficiently advanced magic mistaken for technology An interesting note is how incredibly rare such advanced tech is though, at least in Namir's limited experience. Clearly it's not something you'd find on the rank-and-file for either side.

Namir was aiming his rifle again when he heard Roja shout an oath. A chrome cylinder just smaller than Namir's fist arced through the darkness toward Darth Vader: a fragmentation grenade.

Namir barely had time to hope before Vader lifted his blade and gestured to one side. Toward. Namir. Like an obedient droid, the grenade adjusted its trajectory in mid-arc. The events seemed to follow the logic of a nightmare - Vader's capabilities seemed limited only by their horrific implications.

Yet another example of Vader redirecting projectiles in mid-flight.

The disruptor burned bright, turned a woman standing at the comm station to rags and dust as Brand rolled through the doorway.

Effects of a disruptor pistol on a human body. "Rags" indicates it wasn't magically 100% vaporized, but one could easily argue for an energy output exceeding mere megajoules.

"Night vision," came the command from 113. 475 had never seen his face, but she'd been told he was one of the original clone commandos who'd founded the Stormtrooper Corps. His voice sounded old. "Don't touch anything."

She let her visor switch over. The night-vision enhancements left a green haze over the corridor, but it was better than nothing.

The group stalked forward and came to a three-way branch. 475 pulled up a bluepring of the freighter model - a Corellian Engineering VCX-150 - on her display. More than half a dozen rooms to search. Half a dozen chances to be ambushed or to trigger a trap. She tapped her partner on the arm and took the left passage, hoping for the best.

The search went slowly, at first. They scanned each room for comm signals and power sources - anything that might be used in a bomb - before entering. When they'd barely finished the first bunk room after ten minutes, however, the order came for the garrison to speed things up.

Additional vision modes, another example of on-demand helmet displays, and active scanning during a search by Stormtroopers. Also we still have original clonetroopers kicking around in the Corps, which is amazing considering how old they would be at this point (older even than they were in the Rebels cartoon).

Wide black eyes stared out at the troopers as half a dozen rifles took aim. 475's helmet identified the species before she could: Chadra-Fan.

Besides displaying information on demand, the helmets can also do so automatically.

The dome over the tower gleamed with oily iridescence, as if one of the offworlders' great airships had bled out its gears onto Crucival. In the evening twilight, its glimmering outshone anything else on the horizon, and it shimmered brighter and coruscated more furiously with every energy blast that struck, every volley from the enemy. Green and yellow fire streamed in perfect lines from distant cannons, rippling the dome's unnatural surface. Burning, crackling shells descended upon the dome with a shriek, exploding in bursts that could have leveled a hillside.

Example of the type of firepower a theater shield can shrug off.

[Balrog]

Last update for now. This one is a bit more spoiler-ific than the previous ones. While it couldn't be helped given the technical and other details they reveal, effort has been made to minimize their impact.

"Emperor Palpatine, the moffs, Darth Vader - they've done what they do best, deploying overwhelming force to scour the Outer Rim of their enemies. And to cover those vast territories, they've moved whole fleets out of position. For the first time in years, the Core Worlds' defenses are enervated."

There were murmurs about the room. Carver spoke up, openly skeptical. "How do you know?"

Chalis flicked her hand dismissively. "I was at Hoth," she said. "I recognized the ships they brought to bear. I've also been monitoring whatever unsecured broadcasts make it to this sandpit, and - most important - I know what resources the Empire has and what it doesn't. Pulling fleets from active war zones or the Mid Rim border is too risky. Drawing from the Core Worlds for Vader's operation just makes sense."
...
"This vulnerability," she said, "isn't a license for conquest. If we try to strike at the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, we'll be obliterated before the drop ships hit atmosphere. But I know how the Imperial war machine functions. I want to make its gears grind and shatter."
...
The planet appeared ordinary enough, covered in clouds and water and land; it might have been any of a hundred worlds Namir had visited already, except for the single ring that circled its equator.
...
"This is the planet Kuat," Chalis said. "Its shipyards are the primary source of the Empire's Star Destroyer fleet. I propose we destroy them."

The holographic image flickered and resolved on a magnified portion of the ring. Up close, it appeared to be an immense scaffold in space, bridged and augmented by enormous habitats bristling with machinery. Inside the scaffold, like prisoners caged and left for dead, were the skeletons of wedge-shaped ships, their metal skin only half covering their bodies. Tiny bright dots drifted to and from the skeletons, alighting on the ships or returning to the habitats.

"If we succeed," Chalis went on, "our attack will cripple the Empire's fleet-building capacity and deny repairs and upkeep to current vessels. Star Destroyers may be nearly indestructible, but they're the most resource-intensive ships this galaxy has ever seen. Kuat possesses the only shipyards capable of supporting and maintaining more than a handful at a time.

"Furthermore, stopping the production and repair of Star Destroyers will inhibit the Empire's capacity for fast infantry deployment. No longer would a single ship be able to carry thousands of stormtroopers and a full squadron of armored transport walkers. The Empire's strategy for planetary containment would need to shift."
...
"The Alliance tried to attack Kuat before," he said. "We're only two ships..."

"Kuat's defenses are oriented toward space combat," Chalis said smoothly, as if she'd been expecting the question. "We're an infantry company, and no one's ever tried a ground invasion of the shipyards." She snapped again, and the hologram magnified further, showing tram tracks and enclosures against the backdrop of space. "The orbital ring has a total inhabitable area of less than three hundred thousand square kilometers - smaller than a typical planetary subnation, and susceptible to unique forms of attack. Imagine urban warfare in a city where you could sever whole blocks from the mainland at the touch of a button; where any damage to the infrastructure was a blow to the enemy. Yes, it will be bloody - but I believe Twilight can succeed."
...
"All that said," she went on, "the Kuat star system's space-based defenses are formidable, even with fleet elements diverted to the Outer Rim. We need to soften them further in order to safeguard the Thunderstrike's passage to the shipyards."
...
"To that end," Chalis said, "we must take an indirect path to Kuat and strike these designated targets. No sieges, no prolonged attacks - these are surgical strikes against logistical hubs. We destroy these, and the Empire must react by reassigning ships an officers - either to repair the damage or to compensate by bolstering efficiency elsewhere. Directly or indirectly, these reassignments will cannibalize Kuat's own defenses."

"You can't possibly know that, either." Carver again, voice steady despite his confrontational tone.

"I understand the flow of resources within the Empire better than anyone alive," Chalis said. "It's why Captain Evon accepted me. It's why Alliance High Command needed me. I absolutely know it."

A lot of information to take it, and one I want to focus on a bit, since it can easily be read as more of that dreaded minimalism from the past EU: first in the sense of a single planet somehow being so important to a galactic scale empire, second the ability for a single infantry company to actually accomplish such a debilitating blow.

First, this takes place immediately after Hoth, with Twilight Company "adrift" so to speak as the Alliance is completely on the run and unable to properly function. In this context former Imperial Governor Chalis is trying to convince Twilight to undertake this dangerous mission and painting it as giving them a chance to strike back at the Empire in a meaningful way. In spite of this proposal, the command staff is weary of actually attempting the mission until finally pushed over to agreeing, in no small part due to some subtle manipulation on the governor's part.

In this context, phrases like Kuat being the only planet which can build "more than a handful" of ISDs or them being the most resource-intensive ships ever built (*cough*SuperStarDestroyers*cough*) aren't truly problematic IMO; besides being sufficiently vague wording, they are more an example of the sort of hyperbole any politician would use in an attempt to persuade a neutral audience to their side of the argument. Furthermore, quotes later in the book make it clear the author has some appreciation for the size of the galaxy this war is taking place in, which gives the impression he wasn't being purposefully minimalistic in this passage.

Finally, and pretty big spoilers for the end,
Spoiler

The plan doesn't succeed: the Imperials eventually do figure out what Twilight Company is up to and intercept them before they even get close to Kuat. Around the same time this does happen Namir realizes that - even if a much-depleted Twilight Company survives to reach Kuat and accutally succeeds in its original mission - it would suffer such losses as to cease to exist, causing him to call off the raid for a different plan; and given the opportunistic and vindictiveness of Governor Chalis, she might have known all along it was a suicide mission and simply wanted to get back at the Empire no matter the cost or actual chance of success. As such, we have no way of knowing if Twilight could have actually done anything to significantly degrade the Kuat shipyards.

End spoilers

Not all of the worlds targeted by Twilight will receive a mention here, if only because not all of them have anything truly noteworthy happen from a debating standpoint, but it is a fair number.

The Thunderstrike and Apailana's Promise flew in such tight proximity that their shields bumped and clashed, coruscating through the visible spectrum and releasing enough energy to atomize any TIE fighter that passed through their field. Any squadron that attempted to weave between the rebel vessels was destroyed as surely as if it had been crushed between their hulls.

But for every starfighter that disappeared in a green-white cloud of burning oxygen and Tibanna gas, a hundred more swarmed into the rebels' path.

Interesting interaction between energy shields in an atmosphere. Sufficient energy to vaporize starfighters suggests towards the level of power the shield generators produce, though like previous examples nothing concrete to derive hard numbers from.

...Chalis had assured them that no warships would be present and that Twilight's largest worries would be ion cannons on the surface and satellite defenses in orbit. Thus, the plan to accelerate rapidly toward the planet and dive swiftly into Mardona's atmosphere over water - beneath the satellites and out of range of the continental cannons.

Besides the large number of TIE fighters, description of the limited defenses protecting the target world Twilight is attacking.

Mardona III was - by Chalis's scorn-ridden description - a warehouse world. Not a bustling trade port or a production facility, but a place for the Empire to stockpile equipment and materials for delivery to nearby systems in times of need. The warehouse worlds were part of a larger Imperial initiative to allow for rapid reallocation of resources and to eliminate dependency on outdated trade routes. More important, they were a vulnerability the Alliance hadn't yet learned to exploit.

The mega-spaceport that served as Mardona's primary warehouse hub consisted of dozens of enormous black metal buildings that rose from the rocky surface. They were almost crystalline in design, cuboids with their sides perfectly sheared at odd angles. The buildings extended deep underground, where the main storage facilities were contained and where an elaborate system of tramways allowed automated transfer of goods according to shipping schedule and projected needs. The entire mega-port was large enough to house millions, but its systems were largely mechanized; a few hundred thousand dockworkers and administrators and droid controllers were enough to keep the warehouse world running.

Full description of the target world's purpose in the Empire (reminds me of another warehouse planet in another scifi universe, though there won't be any daemons showing up here). The relatively light defenses suggests how uncommon the Empire believes such planets would be attacked, though it always helps to have an inside (wo)man to point out your pressure points and ways around your defenses.

Charmer's squad had been attacked by an armored Imperial vehicle - not a tank or a walker, but a segmented metal worm that glided on repulsors and sped along the tramways. It had been armed with flame weapons and stun beams - anything more powerful, Namir suspected, would risk collapsing the tunnels.

Another unique Imperial vehicle makes it appearance, designed specifically for tunnel warfare.

Leaving Mardona III was no simpler than arriving. Chalis had given the company six days for the mission, after which Imperial reinforcements would arrive to cut off its escape. Even staying that long, she'd insisted, would be a risk.

Example of the response time for Imperial forces coming to the aid of a planet under attack.

"You're one of the new ones," 113 said. More a statment than a question. "Accelerated training to bulk out the corps. Pinyumb your first assignment?"

One wonders what sort of shortcuts were made with this accelerated training; though the Stormie in question seems quite competent, it might explain other *ahem* less than stellar performances showcased by other stormtroopers.

The planet was an agricultural world of boundless hills and neck-high stalks of stiff, leafy flora. Twilight had come to devastate Nakadia's plastoid factories, where millions of tonnes of farm crops were processed into armor-grade polymers and synthetic resins.

The source of the plastoid armor worn by stormies and others.

And then Maediyu and the others had returned from a sortie, staggering and bloody-eyed. The medics had recognized what was happening, but they didn't confirm Namir's suspicions until after Maediyu was dead.

"These aren't pesticides. They've got military bioweapons," Namir told the squad leaders that morning. He kept his voice calm, despite the boiling fury in his guts. "Be careful."

Sixteen other soldiers fell to airspeeders spraying toxins before a scout team located their point of origin Gadren, Mzun, and a dozen other alien soldiers accompanied Namir - who'd wrapped himself in as much protective gear as he'd been able to scrounge - to a launch pad and warehouse high in the hills. They burned the warehouse to the ground, watched metal blacken and curl and listened to poison sizzle inside.

Imperial use of bioweapons, specifically ones that target humans only.

"It was the same toxins."
...
"The bioweapons," Namir said, "that came from Coyerti. We destroyed the Distillery. We destroyed the stockpiles. That stuff should be gone, and instead my people are dead."
...
She spoke slowly, cautiously, apparently constructing an argument as she went. "You're a fine commander. You're a good judge of what your people need and what they can accomplish. But you still think like a man from Crucival."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you don't understand the scale of the enemy. It took me - it took me longer than it should have, too. I don't fault you for it."
...
"We - you and your squad - destroyed enough biotoxin to save millions. Maybe more. But the Empire has been building its arsenal for decades. How much do you think is stored in dusty armories and warehouses across the galaxy?"

I almost want to say this exchange was constructed specifically as a counter to the not-inconsiderable number of people who still cling to the minimalism of the old EU. It also gives me a slight bit of hope that the future of this new EU will be a little less screwy if more of its authors take heed of this message.

"Two more stops," Chalis said, "though resistance will be heavy. We're moving toward the heart of Imperial space - if half the enemy fleet weren't still chasing Alliance High Command, we couldn't even get close. As it is, we need to hit fast enough and hard enough that the Empire can't surround us."

Another passage remarking on the fortuitous situation which has allowed Twilight to conduct its little hit-and-run operation.

Sullust was a mining and manufacturing center for the Empire, a once-proud and influential member of the Republic that had been reduced to the position of a scrabbling vassal - a source of fuel for the Imperial machine, and little more. Its cities were buried like gemstones below the scorched and blasted surface, housing billions of native Sullustans and generations of immigrants from offworld.

Current situation and population of Sullust.

The Thunderstrike and Apailana's Promise jumped out of hyperspace less than half a million kilometers from Sullust - so close that, upon the vessel's entry into realspace, the sudden clench of the planet's gravity nearly tore both ships apart. Namir lurched forward in his seat restraints in one of the Thunderstrike's drop ships and heard metal pop in the hanger bay. Emergency klaxons blared. An instant later, the voice of Commander Tohna came over the comm roaring and laughing.

Sullust's orbital defenses were too formidable to risk facing in a straight-up fight; that was the only thing Twilight's senior staff had managed to agree on. Tohna's "solution" - jump in barely a stone's throw from the planet, delivery the drop ships, and jump out before the defenders could coordinate a counterattack - had possessed the potential to obliterate the company in a nanosecond if the jump were miscalculated, but Namir hadn't heard any better alternatives and approved the plan anyway. There were many fates worse than a quick and foolish death.

An interesting situation, I don't believe we have ever had it explained or shown before that jumping too close to a planet would produce such an affect (close being a relative term, since the distance involved is relatively similar to the distance between Earth and its Moon). On one hand, it could just be every time we've seen SW ships jump in at a distance which appears to be fairly close to a planet, they were simply further out than suspected, distance being hard to judge. It could also just be that Sullust itself produces some unique gravitational anomaly, or that the Rebel ships in question, being quite a bit battered at this point, were more affected than would normally be the case for a ship in more pristine condition.

Regardless, it gives some definitive distance between the ships' reentry point and the planet itself, a distance which under the best of circumstances would take current-day Earth a fair number of days to traverse. That this distance was covered at absolute worse in a few hours' time is a showcase for the types of accelerations feats seen in the movies.

The duty officers began to applaud. It was a breach of protocol Tabor could forgive - this was their triumph as much as his, and they deserved to linger on it. They deserved a reminder that they had earned their positions aboard a Star Destroyer, earned the power to ruin planets and battle fleets.

More ISD firepower 'suggestions' as it were.

He skimmed through the lists and monthly reports, unsure what he was looking for. He wondered briefly if he was reading the data correctly: Surely there shouldn't have been such a massive difference between departures and arrivals? It seemed like for every hundred ships that reached the planet, a thousand left.

He asked Chalis about the discrepancy. She shrugged and reclaimed the datapad. "Manufacturing," she said. "Sullust isn't Kuat, but it does handle small-scale production of starfighters and assault shuttles. Nothing important."

"Thousands of ships a year is small-scale production?" he asked. His voice was low, but he felt the others glance his way.

Chalis didn't even look up, her eyes on the pad again. She only grunted an acknowledgement, but he could hear the words she'd spoken to him once before:

You still think like a man from Crucival. You don't understand the scale of the enemy.

I do believe the author is trying to get a message across with these passages. As such it's an example of what "small-scale" means on a galactic scale.

Private Hazram Namir had been in his bunk disassembling and reassembling a DLT-20A blaster rifle when word about Alderaan came down. It hadn't meant anything to him. Only the fact that Howl had announced it over the Thunderstrike's intercom indicated the planet's destruction was anything out of the ordinary: In the two months since Namir had joined Twilight Company, he'd seen weaponry that could melt gleaming cities into slag, fought beside more species than he could name, heard stories of a Galactic Empire that held millions of stars in its grip. If he'd been told that planets were a common casualty of war, he'd have believed it without a second thought.

One of the occasional flashbacks the book provides, further indications as to the amount of firepower displayed and the size of the Empire. Or, to paraphrase a great philosopher, "Scale, motherfucker, do you understand it?"

The Empire struck the first hammer blow of the battle. As one, a dozen airspeeders released miniature scatter bombs over Twilight's outer line - explosives small enough not to imperil the facility, powerful enough to tear armor and skin. Namir saw a hundred bright flashes among the rocks, pictured his friends pierced by shards of obsidian or deafened by the blasts.

Imperial cluster munitions.

The Empire's infantry and airspeeders kept their distance from the facility as the Star Destroyer descended. The reason why became obvious when the first emerald turbolaser blasts rained from the sky onto the mountainside, cratering the black slope and turning stone into cracked, sizzling glass. The few Twilight Company scouts and snipers who prowled about the peak's upper reaches rapidly withdrew to the innermost perimeter or were disintegrated by the lasers' atomizing spite.

Close fire support offered by an ISD in atmosphere.

Imperial mortar shells shrieked, some falling short of their targets and others ripping apart squads of Twilight soldiers.

Light artillery employed by the Empire.

Spoiler

Then the shuttle seemed to come ablaze with a blinding aura of blue-white light. Electrical arcs leapt over its surface and the shuttle bay echoed with the sounds of sparks and current. Popping noises emanated from control panels around the hanger as arcs of lightning touched tractor beam generators and docking clamps. A noxious smell of melted metal and plastoid caused Tabor to gag and shield his nose with his sleeve.

When the light faded, spots of green and red floated across Tabor's eyes and he blinked harshly to clear them. Somehow words came to him as his stunned, aging brain realized what had occurred.

"An ion bomb," he murmured.

The deck shuddered beneath him and the hull of the Herald seemed to groan.

"About twenty of them," Chalis said. She was on her hands and knees, slowly climbing to her feet. Her voice was suddenly desiccated. "Everything Twilight had left."

The deck shuddered again. Verge glanced about, legs gently bowed for balance and lips twisted into a sneer. "This is an Imperial Star Destroyer. All vital equipment is shielded. Even twenty bombs will do nothing."

But that wasn't true. Tabor shook his head, trying to organize his thoughts. Why wasn't it true? Think, Tabor.

"We're in atmosphere," he said, embarrassed at his own urgent tone. "We need full power to stay aloft. Any disruption at all-" Star Destroyers were extraordinary vessels, capable of razing mountains and carrying armies. But their mass was measured in millions upon millions of tonnes, and their energy requirements were vast.

He made an effort to compose himself, to speak in a manner befitting an Imperial captain. "We must withdraw immediately," he said. He tapped his comlink. "Transfer all weapons and auxiliary power - anything we can spare - to the engines. Get us back in orbit."

Chalis manages to sneak some ion bombs aboard her shuttle and into the ISD with the resulting consequences. Why the ISD's sensors didn't pick them up, when they could detect the presence of life onboard, isn't known; at a guess they were in some sort of powered-down state and remote sensing couldn't pick them out. Notable for a number of factors: the "hardened" aspect and sheer mass of ISDs, massive ion explosions causing at best temporary negative effects on living beings, and an indication of how energy-intensive it is for a big capital ship to operate in an atmosphere.

[Balrog]

A few new things to add, overlooked the first time around but included for some added fluff.

The acrid scent in the air was almost painful. Roach asked Namir about it, and he shrugged. "Blaster bolts rip up the atmosphere," he said. "Every time you fire, something gets vaporized. Every planet stinks a little different."

A nice touch about different plants "stinking" differently when blasters are used which gives a little more depth. Plus it includes the word vaporize, which is super-happy-good in debates.

"So, Sergeant," Ajax called, after pushing a pile of credits over to Gadren. "Any news from Fisheye Company?"

Namir frowned. "What's Fisheye have to do with anything?" Fisheye was the Alliance's Sixty-Eighth Infantry, aquatic division.

It's not just the Empire with specialist troops designed around their environment.

Despite a dozen levels of security - from stormtrooper-run checkpoints to worker psychological profiling to biometric scans - the facility's machinery was inherently vulnerable.

Type of security employed at an Imperial factory.

Toward the end of her shift, she was assigned sentry duty at a tram station. She'd been partnered with SP-156. She'd worked with him before, trusted him as much as any colleague, though she didn't know his real name.

"You think anyone died?" he asked. "At the facility, I mean."

SP-475 winced insider her helmet. Nonessential chatter was against regulations while on duty, and the suits recorded everything.

One imagines those two stormtroopers on the Death Star protecting the tractor beam generator were in real trouble then...at least until it went boom.

SP-475 was the third stormtrooper into the docking bay. She kept her head low and her blaster steady, as she'd been trained. She followed her partner to cover behind the charging station, swept for enemies while the rest of the team poured in. She trusted her helmet display to pick out motion, to alert her to any enemy she'd missed.

"Clear!" a static-distorted voice called. The speaker's designation blinked in her display...

Stormtrooper helmets have motion sensors. Also understand the importance of providing cover while friendlies move.

Then she heard a high-pitched whine in her helmet. Her comrades began shouting.

The overlapping, static-distorted voices were impossible to decipher. In a second, a commanding officer would override the others and make her orders clear. She wanted to freeze. She wanted to run. The last time she'd seen her fellow troopers fall into chaos, men and women had died.

Her chest ached. She wasn't breathing.

In the periphery of her vision, she saw another trooper gesture behind her and up the cavern wall. Her rifle was in her hands as she turned. She stumbled half a step back and bumped into one of the maintenance crew.

The helmet directed her attention to a mechanical sphere no larger than her fist, floating a dozen meters above the cavern floor and weaving toward the tunnel to the surface. She didn't question what it was. She brought up her rifle and squeezed the trigger three times. Her visor polarized against the red glare. Two shots chipped the stone. The last clipped the sphere, sending it spiraling onto the ground and leaving a trail of sparks.

Nothing exploded. No one died. It was a long time before she heard comm chatter again or noticed the two troopers kneeling over the fallen sphere.

"Spy cam," came a crisper voice. "Knew the rebels couldn't stay away." It was 113. "Nice shot, Four-Seven-Five."

Rebel spy cam employing some sort of defensive weapon (sonic? EM?) and more features of stormtrooper helmets. Also an example of a stormtrooper actually hitting a difficult target.