Five Minutes of Death (Part 1)

The most unforgettable battle? That had to be the Battle of Terminus. Back then, no one in the entire Milky Way Galaxy believed we could win, but we did... In a war of attrition, we defeated the Galactic Republic... In that battle, everything happened within those five minutes...

—Excerpt from an interview with a Clone Wars veteran on Dawn TV Station's special program, "Road of Empire," Fourth Empire, Imperial Calendar 47.

...Over the several decades in which the Fourth Empire fought its way up from nothing until its founding, it had experienced countless wars. Unlike the sweeping Battle of Coruscant and Battle of Corellia, the Battle of Terminus Planet had left an indelible impression on this veteran. Looking back now, all we could do was marvel at the fearless spirit of sacrifice displayed by the Empire's fallen heroes, and their determination to fight every battle to the death, regardless of its scale... Throughout it all, the wise and decisive leadership of our great Emperor of the Empire, Tang Xiao, deserved tremendous credit...

The host's rich, magnetic voice came from offstage. Born in Imperial Calendar 9, this host did not understand the significance of the Battle of Terminus Planet.

Even now, the Fourth Empire had not fully declassified the course of that four-year Clone Wars. The details of those countless battles remained unknown. From this host's perspective, it was understandable that he regarded the Battle of Terminus—a battle involving fewer than two hundred warships on both sides—as insignificant.

Compared with the Battle of Coruscant, where the number of kilometer-class capital ships deployed by both sides exceeded ten thousand, even the Battle of Corellia, in which more than six thousand warships took part, made the Battle of Terminus Planet seem like nothing more than a small fry.

But such rumors did exist