TK-462

  There’s no blood on the ground. It just keeps pooling inside my armor. When did it all start? For me, that’s an easy answer. I remember that day like it was... Not true.

  Yesterday’s a haze. So is the day before that, and the one before. I remember that day. I was 12. My father was caretaking a farm of air scrubbers on Eriadu. Endless fields of vertical machinery cleaning the air while the mining industry pumps more toxic stuff into it. Most people have never seen a scrubber farm—they build these things as far from civilization as humanly possible. No one wants to be reminded that they’re the only thing keeping the air breathable. And besides, they’re really ugly. We didn’t mind. To my sister and I, the farm was... A playground. A forest. An army of droids. Whatever we wanted it to be. Mother was gone, and while our father worked, it was always just the two of us. We rarely went to town—dad said it was dangerous—and there was no one else around.

  Xea had just turned eight when the rebels came. She wasn’t feeling well that night, and I let her sleep in my bed. She liked that. Their ships were quiet, almost silent. I’m not sure how father heard them, but he did. It was the sound of his blaster that woke me. When I made it outside, the rebel ships already had tow hooks on two of the air scrubbers. I guess they thought they could just grab them and leave. Amateurs. After a lot of tugging, one of the machines finally budged, but it was still tethered by a power conduit. That big shiny cable ripped through the ground as the scrubber rose above our heads and into darkness. Father started screaming, firing at the fast approaching furrow instead of the ship. I just watched. I didn’t understand. I should have—I had read enough of those science books my mother gave me. She loved science. “If you’re gonna live in this universe,” she said, “the least you can do is try to understand how it works.” Those books were all that was left of her, and I knew most of them by heart. Tensile strength. Units of force per cross-sectional area. How much pull can a thing take before it breaks apart. Dad didn’t know anything about physics, but he had fixed enough of these conduits to know it would put up one hell of a fight. Ship, power conduit, tow cable. One of them had to lose. When the ship ran out of leash, it came to a sudden stop, and the tow cable snapped. Half a second later, the scrubber reappeared in the sky. It fell through our roof and into my room, crushing my little sister into the ground.

  When did it start? Right then. At that very moment, I knew I wanted to kill rebels.

  That was the year Wilhuff Tarkin became Grand Moff. Things changed quickly after that on Eriadu. Rule of law. Crimes were punished, harshly. Some say too harshly, but there was nothing to fear if you had nothing to hide. I for one didn’t mind if a few terrorists were made an example of. Lives were saved. We felt... protected. You could walk the streets of Phelar without fear of being robbed or gunned down. Dad even sent me for supplies on my own a few times. I don’t know if Xea would have lived had Tarkin been in charge at the time. I do know she would have liked to see Phelar.

  I met him once, the Grand Moff. He came to the farm not long after it was attacked. I’d never seen my father so nervous. I don’t remember what Tarkin said. To be honest, I wasn’t paying any attention to him. All I could see was the shiny white armor of the men standing behind him. Strong. Placid. Unafraid of the world around them. They would never feel powerless inside that armor. I knew right away: I was going to be a stormtrooper. My father refused, of course. He’d lost a child to the Rebellion, he wasn’t going to lose the other one to the Empire. It didn’t matter. Nothing did. I enlisted as soon as I was of age. I snuck out in the middle of the night, left a note on the kitchen table.

  Junior Academy was a breeze. It’s meant to weed out the weak, but there simply weren’t enough recruits in Phelar. Local authorities were more concerned about not sending their fair share of recruits to the capital than with any of us being unfit for duty. There were seven of us in my unit, and our instructors took great care to ensure that there were seven graduates at the end of the year. I was going to be a stormtrooper.

  My father didn’t attend the ceremony. He wasn’t there when I left for the capital. It didn’t come as a surprise—I never told him I was leaving—yet I found myself scanning the dock for a familiar face until our transport was well in the air. There were so many things I never got to tell him. I didn’t want goodbye to be one of them.

  The Imperial Academy of Eriadu. They say it isn’t as large or prestigious as the one on Coruscant. I wouldn’t know. It looked plenty impressive to me. The main offices were in the old part of town. Ancient, insanely ornate.

  Whoever made all those carvings lived a very wretched life. We were still in the lobby when I met my instructor, a clone by the name of Lassar. Everyone called him Jogan, like the fruit. I never found out where he got the nickname. I also never dared to call him anything but Commander Lassar. He hated me. No, that doesn’t sound right. He was a clone, a perfect fighting machine designed and bred for a sole purpose. We were... lesser things, flawed, just for being born. Rapid aging had made his kind obsolete but it was obvious he resented the idea of enlisted men taking his place, and he loathed all of us for thinking we could. To him, we were a bunch of house pets trying to act like veermoks. So start with that, profound resentment. Think of that as the baseline. He hated me. “You’re short, farm boy. You’ll be outta here in a week.” That’s how he introduced himself. He was right. I was shorter than everyone else.

  Kidney shots. Why do they hurt so bad? That’s how my first morning at the academy started. Lassar had my comrades pull my blanket over my head and punch me in the sides until I stopped moving. That’s how every morning started for an entire year. I wasn’t angry at the other recruits. Every cry of mine was a stark reminder that it was best to stay on Lassar’s good side. After about a week, I could tell they started pulling their punches, adding a little “ugh!” for dramatic effect. All the while, the commander just stood there and smiled. In his defense, he smiled all the time—literally. It might have been nerve damage.

  Stupid as it may seem, being whaled on every day before breakfast only served to strengthen my resolve. The way I saw it, quitting after a day meant I’d taken a beating for nothing, the next day it was two beatings, then 50, then 100. After a year, I would have hit myself if it meant I could go on for another day. I was going to be a stormtrooper.

  A new year meant a fresh batch of recruits. I hated myself for it, but I hoped one of them would be a bigger—how did he put it? Oh yes. A bigger “insult to the memory of the countless clones who gave their lives on the battlefield.” No such luck. I was special. I don’t know what they do to the suspected insurgents to make them talk. I only heard rumors. Whatever it is, I’m fairly certain it was done to me at some point or another during my training. I wouldn’t break. Not then.

  It was only a couple weeks before graduation. I can’t help thinking that he timed it that way so it would hurt even more. It was a hot, sticky day, the kind of hot even a cold shower can’t fix. We did a 5K run in full gear as a fitness exam. Before we left, Commander Lassar gave a little speech and offered a toast to those of us who had made it this far. It wasn’t much of a toast since he was the only one with a drink. He downed the emerald wine and crushed the glass on the ground with his boot, as if part of some ancient custom none of us knew about. Then he asked me to remove my boots. I watched him put the broken pieces inside. The little ones worried me the most: the ones that burrow inside your flesh. I put the boot on. It wasn’t courage. I did it out of spite. Spite ran out about 500 meters in. Focus and determination, that got me another three steps. After that, it wasn’t me. Pain is an output from the brain, not an input from the body. Too many pain signals to deal with and the brain shuts down—parts of it anyway. All the things that make me me, my senses, my soul, or whatever you want to call it, all of that
was gone. Whatever crossed that finish line wasn’t me. It wasn’t human.

  I woke up in the infirmary three days later. They had reconstructed both my feet. I didn’t know if I had finished the race. I didn’t care. Every part of me had conceded defeat. I asked the nurse if I could speak to Commander Lassar. He found me lacking on that very first day. Now that I had been measured, I felt I should be the one to tell him he was right. The nurse told me it would have to wait. The doctor had ordered two weeks of rest. Whatever I had to tell the commander, I could tell him after graduation. “You made it”, she said, “You’re a stormtrooper”. Xea would have been proud.

  I had made it. The elite shock troops of the Imperial Army. I was assigned to patrol district five in Eriadu City, the fashion district. The shock part was a bit of an overstatement, though plenty of shoplifters were genuinely surprised to see us. And some of them ran. We liked it when they ran. I had signed on with something slightly different in mind, but petty crime was still crime, and someone had to stop it. I was good at it. I liked watching people enjoy the sense of order and safety we provided. The way that people walk when they’re unafraid, that careless stride, it was... quietly rewarding. I wish it had been enough, but I could never quell the anger. After a year, I heard they were sending more troops to Lothal and I volunteered.

  First time off the planet. Up until we left spaceport, I had held on to the notion that I would see my father again. I felt a knot in my stomach when the ship left the atmosphere, then I got really, really sick. It turns out I’m not built for space travel. Good thing I didn’t choose the Navy.

  The air on Lothal was different. Everything was different. People there had been through some tough times, and it showed. It also made them more... genuine. I loved it there at first. The people in my unit were good men and women.

  Our captain was raised on a nerf farm. He wouldn’t stop talking about it. He could reduce just about every problem imaginable to some simple fact about farming. Crowd control? Think of it as nerf-herding. Hostage situation? You have to keep everyone calm—like assisting a nerf at calving. Terrorism? Well, imagine some of the nerfs contracted the Felucian flu. What do you do to save the herd? You put down all the sick animals, and maybe a few of the healthy ones they had been in close contact with. You have to act fast for it to work, but if it does, the rest of the herd will keep on grazing as if nothing ever happened.

  I had a feeling it wouldn’t be that easy. It wasn’t. I’ve done things I... I’m not a military strategist. Hell, I’m probably not officer material. I realize I’m part of something infinitely bigger than anything I can fathom, and that the reason for everything might not be apparent for someone like me. Still... I’ve done things. Burning down a small village might indeed be for the good of the Empire. It might save lives down the road. But while you’re doing it, it’s hard to see the good of the Empire. It just feels like you’re burning down a small village. We’re the ones that have to deal with the screams, the crying children. I was doing exactly what I set out to do, I was hurting rebels. But I had always imagined it in black and white. Now I was swimming in a sea of gray. There were days when I missed grabbing petty thieves on Eriadu, the clarity of it. Still, I’ve never been squeamish about carrying out orders. I did my job.

  Today, we went hunting for a stolen shipment of rare Kyber crystals. We were pretty happy with ourselves when we found it before lunchtime. There were check posts on every road in the area. Whoever stole that shipment obviously panicked and abandoned it near one of the resettlement camps. We grabbed a bite and headed there to find them. The captain told us how, when a nerf strays from the herd and gets lost, you smack one hard on the butt to make it wail. All the other nerfs will start bawling—some sort of natural instinct—and, with any luck, the stray will hear the nerf choir and find its way back. None of us had any idea what the captain meant, but he seemed pretty confident in his nerf-inspired stratagem, so we didn’t ask. Apparently, it meant grabbing a Rodian shopkeeper by the throat and dragging him to the center of the town square before putting a blaster to his head. He said whoever stole the crystals had to the count of three to come forward, or the Rodian would die. He’d picked the wrong Rodian. No one said a word, even as he hit the ground dead. The captain grabbed a human next, a woman. He didn’t bother explaining himself a second time and started counting down right away. As soon as he said “three”, a man came out of the building to my left, holding a rifle. I shot him on the spot. You don’t point a gun at a stormtrooper. You just don’t.

  A little girl—she couldn’t have been more than 10—came out behind him and ran over to the body. She tried to get him up, shake him back to life. She really tried. One of the first things you learn in the corps is that bodies somehow weigh a million times more dead than they ever did when they were alive. It’s like trying to pick up a sack of water. She fell back on top of him, then she just lay there, combing his hair with her hand.

  It was chaos, blaster fire all around. Another trooper called for help. I turned my head for a second, and that’s when she shot me. I didn’t actually hear the shot, but I felt all my insides move away from the blast point in a nanosecond. There was no point in looking at it. She got me good. I just fell to my knees—that part happened all on its own—and I removed my helmet. It felt good. The breeze on my face, the smells, peripheral vision. And here we are. I’m dying.

  She’s still looking at me. Standing tall over her father’s corpse, all four feet of her. That rifle is just as long as she is, but she’s holding it straight. Her dad taught her well. She’s not firing. She knows I’m done for, but it’s more than that. I recognize that look. She’s feeling something she can’t understand yet. I know because I felt it the night my sister died. It’s happening right in front of me. All that pain, that anger. It was too much to handle a moment ago, like a swarm of lyleks you just can’t fight off. She’s not fighting anymore. She’s letting it in. Part of her just died, but what’s left is feeling more alive than ever. She has purpose. There! Right... now. She knows. She’ll grow up to be a rebel. She’s going to kill stormtroopers.

  I wonder why I’m smiling. I bet you she’s wondering too. What is it I’m feeling? It’s not guilt. It should be, but it’s not. Pride, maybe? Look at her! She’s beautiful.

  When did it start? For her, a second ago. When will it end? I’m coming Xea.

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  From Star Wars Insider 166 (July 2016)

 

 

  Sylvain Neuvel, TK-462

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