The morning after the Galactic Civil War's Battle of Endor in 4 ABY, a Rebel Alliance strike team—the Pathfinders—carried out an assault on an Imperial outpost on the moon Endor. The strike team's target was a base operated by Imperial holdouts looking for an opportunity to counterattack after the Empire had suffered a defeat during the previous day's engagement. Not wanting to leave remaining Imperial forces behind on the moon, General Han Solo led his Pathfinders and some of the moon's native Ewoks in an assault on the outpost.
The Pathfinders arrived on a transport piloted by Lieutenant Shara Bey and took out the base's defenses with the transport's weapons before capturing the base itself. Once inside, they gathered Imperial intelligence revealing the Empire's future plans, indicating that their war with the Empire was not yet over. Afterward, Solo debriefed about the endeavor with other Alliance generals.
The Rebel Alliance launched the Battle of Endor to deliver a devastating blow against the Galactic Empire.
During the Galactic Civil War, in 4 ABY, the Alliance to Restore the Republic launched a massive attack against its wartime enemy, the Galactic Empire, over the forest moon of Endor. The rebels' objective was to destroy the DS-2 Death Star II Mobile Battle Station, an Imperial battle station capable of destroying entire worlds, and kill Emperor Sheev Palpatine. The Alliance Fleet assaulted the Death Star and the Imperial fleet over Endor while rebel General Han Solo led a strike team of Pathfinders onto the surface of Endor to destroy the generator powering the Death Star's shields. The strike team was assisted by the planet's native species, the primitive Ewoks, along with whom they were able to overwhelm the Imperial troops on the moon and destroy the generator. The battle in orbit led to the apparent death of the Emperor and his chief enforcer, Darth Vader, as well as the battle station's destruction.
The battle's end saw the retreat of most Imperial forces from Endor, but some were left abandoned on the moon. While some of those stranded surrendered to the rebels, others dug in and waged a guerrilla campaign against the Alliance, including some of the surviving Imperial troops from the main ground battle, who gathered at hidden bases across the moon. The last of these outposts remained on the far side of the moon from where the rebels were located. The rebels themselves regrouped on the surface to celebrate in Bright Tree Village, the home of the Ewoks who helped them defeat the Empire. Many rebels celebrated their victory, including rebel pilot Shara Bey and her husband, Pathfinder Kes Dameron.
The morning after the Battle of Endor, Solo reassembled the Pathfinders and told them that, while the Empire was in complete chaos after its loss, the rebels had discovered the Imperial outpost on the far side of the moon. Knowing that the Imperial holdouts were looking for an opportunity to counterattack against the Rebel Alliance and not wanting to leave Imperials on the moon for the Ewoks to contend with alone, Solo and Alliance General Crix Madine determined that the Pathfinders would attack the outpost. Solo outlined the plan for the Pathfinders, which was to hit the base as hard as they could with limited air cover, and Bey volunteered to be the pilot that provided air support.
The transport fires on the base, beginning the assault against the Imperial holdouts.
Bey piloted the rebel soldiers and the Bright Tree tribe Ewok warriors who accompanied them to the base, including the scout Wicket Wystri Warrick, bringing the transport in hot in order to mask their approach. Once the ship was above the base, the rebels opened fire on the company of Imperial troops on the ground, which included stormtroopers, an All Terrain Scout Transport, and scout troopers riding 74-Z speeder bikes. The Imperial troops were quickly overwhelmed, and the Pathfinders disembarked from the transport in order to fight the Imperials head-on. They fought their way toward the base while Bey continued firing on the outpost with the ship, taking out its defenses. While Bey kept the ship parked outside, the Pathfinders entered the base and found a great deal of data in the Imperial computers. They returned to the transport once they were finished analyzing it, bringing with them information about Imperial communications traffic and even plans that the Empire had for after the Battle of Endor.
After the outpost assault, the Pathfinders were sent on other missions, such as the raid at the Wretch of Tayron (pictured).
After the assault's discoveries, Solo came to believe that the war was not yet over and relayed this sentiment to his Pathfinders. He attended a debriefing with other Alliance generals about the Imperial outpost mission, telling his peers about the orders being sent throughout the galaxy under Palpatine's name, despite the Emperor's death days before. Not long after the assault's completion, Solo was granted a brief respite from wartime efforts to enjoy his honeymoon aboard the Halcyon star cruiser with his newly wedded wife, Princess Leia Organa.
The Pathfinders later undertook numerous missions to locate and destroy the other remaining Imperial holdouts on Endor and had dealt with most of them within a few weeks, although rumors of surviving Imperials hiding out in the forests and refusing to surrender circulated for years. The war continued for some time after the rebels left Endor. The Pathfinders engaged in multiple assaults after the battle, including a raid on an Imperial Security Bureau black site at the Wretch of Tayron. This allowed the rebels to gain critical intelligence needed to combat Operation: Cinder, the Empire's post-Endor operation designed to destroy multiple worlds in retaliation for the Emperor's death.
The assault on an Imperial outpost first appeared in the first issue of the comic miniseries Star Wars: Shattered Empire. The issue was written by Greg Rucka, illustrated by Marco Checchetto, and published by Marvel Comics on September 9, 2015.
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