Operation: Cinder

"Operation: Cinder is to begin at once. Resistance. Rebellion. Defiance. These are concepts that cannot be allowed to persist. You are but one of many tools by which these ideas shall be burned away."

- A posthumous message from Emperor Palpatine, to a select group of Imperial officers

Operation: Cinder was carried out by the Galactic Empire as a means of devastating several Imperial planets in 4 ABY, only a few weeks following the Battle of Endor. The operation was part of the Contingency, a plan devised by Emperor Palpatine to ensure that the Empire and its enemies did not outlive him should he perish. The plan was put into action following the Emperor's death during the Battle of Endor.

Part of Operation: Cinder called for the devastation of Naboo, the Emperor's homeworld. To accomplish their plans, Imperial forces placed satellites in orbit of Naboo to form a climate disruption array. Electrical storms and other extreme weather events began ravaging the planet. Lieutenant Shara Bey of the Alliance to Restore the Republic commanded Sosha Soruna, Queen of Naboo, and Princess Leia Organa, one of the leaders of the Alliance, into orbit where they began destroying the satellites. They were aided by the arrival of General Lando Calrissian and the Alliance Fleet. Their operation successfully repelled the Imperial attack, though additional attempts were made by the Empire to wipe out what became the presence of the New Republic on Naboo.

Operation: Cinder lasted for at least three months after the attack on Naboo. Other worlds that were targeted included Fondor, Vardos, Burnin Konn, Candovant, Abednedo, and Commenor. By the end of the war in 5 ABY, the Contingency was carried out to rebuild the Empire in the Unknown Regions, though the New Republic was triumphant and survived the Galactic Civil War.

Prelude
"Palpatine's greatest weapon was terror. He reveled in the knowledge of Naboo's fear. That he could and would destroy all of this beauty the moment it suited him&hellip;just as he did Alderaan."

- Leia Organa

Emperor Palpatine, ruler of the Galactic Empire, believed that if he was to ever perish unexpectedly then the Empire did not deserve to live beyond him. He likened it to the strategy game of Shah-tezh, in which the role of each game piece was to protect an Imperator. If the Imperator was to fall, then the surviving game pieces had failed and the game was over, as the others did not deserve to carry on. As a result of that belief, he entrusted Gallius Rax, who knew Palpatine since Rax was a small child before rising to the rank of Fleet Admiral in the Imperial Navy, with carrying out a Contingency plan with only one purpose: the annihilation of the Empire and its enemies, with only a worthy few Imperial survivors being allowed to survive and travel with Rax to the Unknown Regions and build a stronger Empire.

In 4 ABY, Palpatine was killed during the Battle of Endor. The Contingency was activated soon after. As part of the plan, several worlds were targeted for destruction in what was known as Operation: Cinder. One of those worlds was Naboo, Palpatine's homeworld. The Emperor had spent years lording its status as his homeworld over the peaceful planet, wanting its citizens to live in fear with the knowledge that he cared little for Naboo and that he could and would destroy the planet and its beauty at a moment's notice. Not long after the Battle of Endor, Captain Lerr Duvat of the Imperial II-class Star Destroyer Torment was approached by a Sentinel, a droid that carried a posthumous message from the Empire. That message ordered Duvat to begin Operation: Cinder.

The Operation
"Operation: Cinder is the last command of our Emperor, and the first step in securing our future."

- Admiral Garrick Versio to his daughter, Commander Iden Versio

Acquiring the Satellites at Fondor
Commander Iden Versio of Imperial Special Forces was summoned by her father, Admiral Garrick Versio, to the planet Vardos. Iden was ordered to assemble her team, Inferno Squad, for a mission. She received her orders via a Sentinel carrying the Emperor's last command, though she was suspicious of what Operation: Cinder entailed. This led Iden into battle against the Alliance at a shipyard over Fondor, where a Rebel fleet attacked to disrupt the operation.

Target: Vardos
After repelling the Rebel attack at Fondor, Iden Versio and Inferno Squad returned to her father's flagship in orbit over Vardos, their homeworld and a noted Imperial haven. Upon arrival, they noticed the experimental satellites they had protected at Fondor deployed in the planet's upper atmosphere. Iden, now realising what the operation entailed, confronted her father aboard the Eviscerator, furious that their own homeworld was a target of mass murder despite its loyalty to the Empire. In response, she was told that, for the greater good of the Empire, Vardos and a dozen other worlds beside must be sacrificed so that the utter fear and brutality would prove beyond a doubt that the Empire was in charge. The satellites were then activated, spawning massive electrical storm systems within minutes. Unable to stomach this, Iden and fellow agent Del Meeko broke off whist on a mission to the planet surface to extract a high-value Imperial target and attempted to evacuate civilians contrary to orders, for which they were branded traitors and forced to flee in their ship, the Corvus. Whilst the storm systems laid waste to the planet surface, anti-air batteries also shot down any non-Imperial ships attempting to leave, further driving home the horror of the operation.

Target: Naboo
"By order of the Emperor, Naboo is to be scoured."

- Captain Lerr Duvat

Twenty days after the Battle of Endor, Duvat's Star Destroyer was relocated to Naboo and launched satellites in orbit to form a climate disruption array. The array was used to create massive hurricanes and electrical storms across the planet. By the time the array's power reached twenty percent efficiency, three class-five hurricanes were already formed&mdash;with another dozen forming. As fires, flooding, and chaos ripped across the surface of the planet, Lieutenant Shara Bey of the Alliance to Restore the Republic&mdash;who accompanied Princess Leia Organa to Naboo, where Organa rallied the support of Queen Sosha Soruna in establishing the New Republic&mdash;realized that satellites had to be behind the phenomenon. The only means Naboo had of fighting back was to scramble starfighters to destroy the satellites.

Bey was placed in command of the mission, with Organa and Soruna accompanying her. The Emperor demilitarized Naboo many years earlier, but a few N-1 starfighters remained in storage from the Battle of Naboo decades earlier. Once in orbit, Bey destroyed a number of the satellites while Organa and Soruna dealt with TIE fighters dispatched from the Torment. The three pilots were outgunned against seventy-two TIE fighters and were nearly killed before the arrival of General Lando Calrissian and the Alliance Fleet. The Alliance learned of Operation: Cinder during a raid at an Imperial Security Bureau complex at the Wretch of Tayron, allowing them to move their forces to Naboo in time to help save the planet.

The Operation Continues
"Your efforts in combating Operation: Cinder have been instrumental in saving countless innocent lives. That said, as much as Admiral Ackbar and I wish we could tell you the end is at hand&hellip;we see no respite from hostilities at this time&hellip;"

- General Crix Madine, to New Republic soldiers

Three months after the Battle of Endor, the Empire continued to carry out Operation: Cinder on countless worlds. A dozen other worlds were targeted, including Burnin Konn, Candovant, Abednedo, and Commenor. The Alliance was able to determine the purpose of many of these attacks, though they found that the Empire's motivations behind others were less clear. Nonetheless, Republic forces were able to save untold numbers of civilians as a result of combating the Imperial operation. Despite that, it would still be many months until the war came to an end, with Admiral Gial Ackbar and General Crix Madine seeing no end to hostilities with the Empire in the short-term.

Aftermath
Naboo was targeted by the Empire again during the Naboo invasions in an attempt to wipe out New Republic forces on the planet, but the Republic was able to thwart these attacks as they had done with Operation: Cinder. The final phase of the Contingency was ultimately carried out in 5 ABY, as New Republic forces attacked the Empire, assembled on Jakku by Fleet Admiral Rax, during the Battle of Jakku. Using the power of ancient Sith artifacts buried in the surface, Rax intended to destroy the desert planet and wipe out the Empire and its enemies. Rax's plan was thwarted, however, by Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, who sought revenge against Rax after he removed her from power. She killed Rax, and in his dying breaths he urged Sloane to bring worthy Imperial forces into the Unknown Regions and start the Empire anew.

The Republic emerged victorious during the battle and signed the Galactic Concordance with the Empire's Grand Vizier, Mas Amedda, bringing an end to the Galactic Civil War. Sloane and her followers escaped to the Unknown Regions, where they reformed into the First Order.

Behind the scenes
Operation: Cinder first appeared in the second issue of the Marvel comic book series Star Wars: Shattered Empire, written by Greg Rucka. The second issue, released on October 7, 2015, depicted the beginnings of the attack on Naboo, while the third issue, released on October 14, 2015, showed its resolution. The events of the 2017 novel Aftermath: Empire's End, written by Chuck Wendig, revealed that Operation: Cinder was part of the Contingency devised by Emperor Palpatine to destroy the Empire so it could begin again. Operation: Cinder will be further depicted in the 2017 video game Star Wars Battlefront II.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Battlefront II
 * Shattered Empire, Part II
 * Shattered Empire, Part III
 * Shattered Empire, Part IV