CHAPTER THREE

I never saw Elisio again. I don't know if he's even still alive. Sometimes I remember him and wish I could see him again, but we made our good-byes a long time ago for good. I did find my parents again, but things haven't been the same since. Mom just doesn't understand what's going on in the galaxy anymore! She thinks the best thing to do is try to hold the family together and let things be, than everything will just work out in the end.

But it won't! She doesn't realize that while she dithers around trying to "hold the family together" whole species are slaughtered by the Empire! She seems to think that we're the only ones that ever got hurt by Vader and the Emperor, but she couldn't be more wrong. We're the luck ones; we survived, and together even! Or maybe that makes us the un-lucky ones… Sometimes, I wish I'd been the one to die in those white tunnels, cut down by some white-armored stormtrooper's blood-red blast.

But only sometimes. Other times I know that I can do a lot more than I'm doing here on this tiny planet. I won't even bother mentioning the name, it's too out of the way. A refugee planet, mainly. For people like us, yeah. But for people a lot worse off. Aliens, deemed second-class citizens by this sadistic regime. I wasn't even born when the Old Republic held sway, but I know it had to have been better than this. Why? Because it couldn't be any worse! There is no way in whatever hells there are that things could have been worse when the Jedi were around, when the old Senate still ran things…before Palpatine got himself elected Chancellor. What were those people thinking? Whatever it was, they doomed us with it…

I do my best, but not my part. Whenever I can, I head to the refugee shelters set up. I try to comfort the people there, try to heal them, feed them, draw them back into the land of the living, but it's so hard! Some of them run away when they see me coming, because I'm a human. Because I'm the same species as Darth Vader, and Palpatine, and the white-armored, emotionless, hate-filled stormtroopers who killed their family, burned their homes, and murdered their hope.

But it isn't enough. It won't be enough until I can make them realize that humans aren't as bad as those creatures, that I'm not as bad as stormtroopers, or Vader, or the Emperor, or the admirals who sit up in their Star Destroyers, or the TIE pilots who strafe their planets.

Besides, I can fly better than those helmeted losers. I've been practicing, spending every moment I have away from the shelters and home in the sims. They're illegal, and mom doesn't know about them. Some smuggler brought them in or something, but they've been set up in the back of this run-down cantina. I tell mom I'm going to visit my friends, and I am. The people I fly against in there are the best friends I have anymore. They may not help me change bandages or comfort orphans, but lots of them are trying to fight against the Empire. It may be an exercise in futility, but I know it isn't. Hope is never futile.

Going here isn't, either. It's one of the most dangerous things you can do on this planet. Every day there's the chance that the local governor's found out about them and stormtroopers are waiting inside those doors to grab you. That's why we don't even look at the faces of the other people in there with us, and why we don't use our own names. There's a small door into a hallway in the back of the dive, and you walk through it and put on a black mesh mask. Then you go through the door. I mean, you can tell a little bit about what they look like, but unless you're really distinctive, they can't tell who you are, and you can't tell who they are. And most of them wouldn't snitch on you, anyway.

There's this one guy, though…I don't know. I'm worried about him. He always acts so restrained when we pick on some parts of the Empire, but talking about others, he just seems…I don't know. Too vehement, maybe? Anyway, he doesn't ring quite true, but that's probably because I'm paranoid. Too much time on this planet will do that to you. And I've been here way too long. I need to get out of here and put my skills to better use than trading simulated whacks with some mystery creature in a scummy dive on this backwater nowhere planet. If there's a bright center to the universe, you couldn't be farther from. Unless you were on Coruscant, the homeward of the Empire. Palpatine lives there. I would never, ever want to see that creature. Seeing Vader on Cloud City was bad enough; I can't even imagine what it would be like to see him in person.

Unless I had a sniper rifle in my hands, or I was in a X-WING or something like that. I've dreamed that moment millions of times, sometimes even when I'm awake. Like when I'm in the sim vaping a particularly difficult TIE, or when I see what the stormies did to some poor little kid just cause he or she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then I wish I could meet him, if only to send him back under whatever rock he crawled out from under—in pieces. Smoking, burning pieces. And lots of blood. And more pain than you could feel in a thousand, million deaths—because he has a lot more than that many on whatever soul he used to have, once-upon-a-time.

What? Marka, grabbing my arm…

"Marka," I ask, "what's going on?" She drags me into a corner alleyway, to a crowd growing around a vid screen. He was a lot taller, and really really strong for how skinny he was. I forget what species he was; we always laughed about how he was really short for his age, and had to fold his legs into his gut to fit inside the sim. If he didn't have two elbows and knees on each arm and leg, he wouldn't have even been able to get in. He was sad that he'd probably never be able to fit inside a real X-WING. By the time he got old enough to leave planet, had enough money, and got a hold of the Rebel Alliance, he'd be too tall. But that didn't stop him from saving every decacred to buy a ship, or at least a ticket off planet. He always carried it with him—both the money and his dream.

He lifted me up with his phenomenally long, strong arms, so that I could see over the heads of the crowd in front. We both watched in numb silence as the grainy, obviously amateur, patched-in holo continued. Half of a Death Star hung, like black death, in space above a green planet. The contrast made me shiver. There was obviously a battle going on around the camera, which shook and jerked around like it was being held to a viewport, or was maybe planted on the side of a big ship…medical frigate, maybe? There was no noise at all, eerily, but what was happening was all too clear. We watched with bated breath as a rag-tag group of X- B- and A-WINGS darted in and out among TIEs and Imperial craft.

Suddenly, an A-WING flew out of the unfinished weapon of destruction, followed a few moments later by an X-WING. I crossed my finger and wished both pilots luck—suddenly, the Death Star went up like a super nova! A YT-1300, or maybe 1400, flew out of the expanding fire. The picture continued for a few seconds before the authorities got to it and clicked it off. Marka set me down and we stared at each other, mute. As if on cue, everyone suddenly cheered, myself included.

We didn't know what exactly had happened, but we knew that the Rebellion had just blown up another Death Star before it could make another Alderaan. The cheering went on even after the shooting had started. We just didn't realize it. But the Empire had arrived, and the stormtroopers were mowing down anyone they saw. Marka and I rushed across the street towards the cantina, I doing my best to keep up with his longer and more agile legs. Suddenly, he shoved me as hard as he could and I went sprawling across the tarmac. He fell, then, cut down by a man dressed in black who was hiding in the doorway. He was wearing the same outfit as the one I'd been worried about—plus an Imperial symbol. I gasped and pulled a small laser from my pocket. I shot the person before he could fire at me. I rushed over to Marka, who grabbed my hand weakly.

"Take it…go…stop them…please."

"What are you talking about, Marka?" I asked in confusion.

He pressed a small pouch of credits into my hand. It contained every credit he'd ever owned, saved and pinched for almost his whole life. "What? Marka, I can't take this! It's all your money! What are you do—"

"I'm…dying, Rhys…" he whispered to me. "Have to…take it…please…help…save everyone else…from fate…from…Empire…"

"Marka, no! Marka!" I sobbed over his still body for a few minutes, until the sound of blaster fire knocked me back to reality. I gently closed his eyes and whispered a final goodbye. I also made a promise to him that I would save the rest of the galaxy from the evil that had claimed my friends.

Then I stood up and tucked the credits in my pocket. I walked to a near, abandoned vid-screen and recorded another goodbye, this one for my parents, before I walked to the starport.

I don't know if they ever got it. They died on that scummy planet, along with lots of my friends I'd made there. But…I have to hope they did.

If all this tragedy has given me nothing else, it has given me that right.