Freedom or Death

[Krassus Horuset]

CHAPTER I: Tarhan I


The Gruuvan Shaal parlor had a name once, an overlong thing in Old Nam’tees that promised spice and smoke, and the best cut of meat this side of Nam’ta Prime’s equator. The script still curled in pink neon over the window, but a third of the letters had gone dim, and two of the rest flickered like exhausted eyes.

Empty tables waited in fours, chrome legs and white laminate wiped near to the bone. The vibro-fan above the door turned on a dry bearing, creaking like a ship’s mast on windless seas. One slow groan every revolution.

A holobox in the corner dribbled out music meant for livelier hours, an auto-mix of synth pipes and drum loops, always almost about to be something anyone cared to hear, then wandering away again into generic slop. Perfect for restaurant ambience.


Derrek had the grill open and his shoulders rounded, the Besalisk’s four thick hands working with patient fury; polish, buff, turn, polish again. He said it got streaks if the paste set, and that had sounded like a reason the first time. By the fifth, even Derrek looked a little ashamed of the zeal in his elbows, sighing as he polished the hours away behind his unlit grill.

Tarhan sat on the high stool behind the register and slouched until his horns bumped the back wall. The young Zabrak had the holonet open on his pad, his tattooed face lit in shifting colors; Imperial teal, then the sunny saffron of adverts, then the lipstick red of a content warning he swiped away without reading. He wore the restaurant apron still, a once-white thing spattered in sauces and water rings, tied twice around a waist that had nothing spare on it. On a normal day his shift passed in bursts: orders, bites to wrap, oil spitting at his wrists, Derrek swearing like a freighter captain barking commands out to his deckhands.

But now there were no orders. A Twi’lek couple had come in at noon and bought tea, sitting in a corner without speaking, leaving half the cups as they went. After that? Nobody. The door rang only for the wind.

“Song change,” Derrek muttered from the kitchen without looking up.

“Uh-huh,” Tarhan replied, poking at the holo tile next to the register. The synth pipes playing from the holobox gave way to something with more drum, then to something more smooth. He returned to his scrolling.

With a touch the hutt-ball game playing on his pad made way for the sound of smooth, official brass that suggested medals and clean boots. Governor Ralter appearing in frame, a hard woman rendered soft by the algorithm that smoothed every face on this channel. Old footage, Tarhan thought. The Governor’s hair different; smoother. The frown and dark circles under her eyes not yet a part of the face displayed. “Nam’ta is safe,” she said. “Nam’ta is united.” Behind her ran a loop of parades, flags folded like bread, gift baskets for nameless veterans. “But only because of those who fight for her. The few, the brave, the—”

Tarhan’s thumb slid before she finished.

The brass chased him into the next tile and then cut at once to a youth with shoulders like a closet, all square angles and new Imperial armor. “Join the Imperial Sector Defence Forces,” the lettering demanded, not a question.
Do something. Be someone. Learn a trade. Serve your sector. Serve your Empire.
The boy clicked open a thermal detonator with the ease of a lighter and smiled at the camera as if expecting a kiss for his patriotism.


Tarhan scrolled, nose wrinkling. He found a holo of a man he’d seen three times before, an Arcona who gave cooking lessons with a blaster rifle slung across his back, making soup with the bored calm of a soldier on leave.

There were a series of funny edits made from his dry expression and alien accent. He snorted at one and watched it twice. Another scroll, then an advert for a sportsbook he could not legally use.

Then a music teaser, a local label’s banner; the grain in the picture said the artist was more talented than paid. The beat in his ears shifted into real rhythm for the first time that day. He disconnected his earbuds and connected it to the shop’s holobox. A trembling string counterpointed by a warm kick. The singer came in low and careful, like a secret shared behind closed doors. Derrek’s polishing slowed as he listened.
“Who’s that?”

“Sylvi Lumi,” Tarhan said. “Just a teaser.”

“Tell her to come in and eat eh?” Derrek said. “I’ll give her a discount if she posts about the shop. Is she pretty?”

“She’s a Bothan,” Tarhan said, waiting for Derrek’s reaction.

“Ah… Never mind then.” A smirk, then he scrolled on, earbuds connected once more.

Holo after holo, and then, there. A thumbnail that was just sky, the slanted line of a roof, and the corner of a torn banner flapping in burnt air.
The caption spelled F.N.A. with an emoji knife. One of Barracas’ rebel groups, Tarhan knew.
 His thumb hovered the way a hand hovers over a burn. The thing about these, other than that they were highly illegal to watch; posted by burner accounts on Nam’ta’s holonet, was that they were usually just noise.

A burst of static, rebel armor-cam footage. The ground too close. Some shouting, blaster fire, then the end. He knew better than to expect anything but the bitter taste of war footage in his mouth afterwards. He tapped anyway.


The shot began wide: Nam’ta Secundus, if the ruined industrial sector was anything to go by. Bulkheads of old factories risen around the recorder like teeth; the broken windows were teeth too. The area bombed out; the light brown and gray that came after fire. Somebody on the rooftop coughed; a thoughtless human cough. He swung the camera and caught them all in frame.

Imperial siege tanks; six in a straight line, each the size of a small townhouse, all flat plates and humped turrets. The column damaging the street by rolling down it. Soldiers flowed on either side of the snaking column as it crept through the ruined road. Armor clean at the shoulders where they were emblazoned with the Imperial banner and stained elsewhere.

The charcoal insignia of the Conquest Consolidation Corps gleaming in the plating of chestplates and tank hulls. They moved like the music playing in the background said they would, with precision. Trained and battle-hardened. Moving in formations, rifles at the same angle. Scanning alleys and windows. But seemingly missing the man with the camera.

In the background of the video a voice began to sing in a rasp friendly enough to seem harmless: “Go on home, Imperial soldiers, go on home…”

Tarhan almost smiled. Music was such a simple thing, but somehow everyone always found a song to do the bloody work.

“Have you got no kriffin’ homes of your own?” The voice continued, a drum behind it. The camera tightened a little; cropped as if the edge of the column was the edge of the very world.

“As long as you’re here, we’ll fight you without fear—”

An Imperial soldier looked up, idly, like a man noticing weather. The tune made Tarhan’s throat itch, and he swallowed and didn’t take his eyes off the feed.

“—Until Nam’ta is free once more….” The voice laughed and then took the melody someplace twisty and proud. “And if you stay, Imperial soldiers, if you stay?”


A blast.

The world whitened; the street awash with dust, fire, and a wash of petal color. And then there were no men any longer; a pink mist and hard pieces of what had been soldiers blew away in the shockwave.

 And the lead tank, gods. The tank lifted entire; all that weight and steel jumping up a solid three meters into the air, tearing open as it jumped; wrangled inside out violently by the force of the explosion as if a giant had pinched it and tossed it back in disgust.

The camera jumped. The rooftop cougher made a noise that might have been a prayer or a slur. A wash of dust overtaking the camera’s point of view.

The singer didn’t miss a beat as the image faded.

“You’ll never, ever beat the F.N.A!” The frame froze.

The Free Nam’ta coat of arms reared up. A green republic sigil with a wreath like forest around it, and the words overlaid in a heroic font that didn’t care you had just watched a platoon of men as precisely machined as their rifles turn to mist.

“FREEDOM OR DEATH!”


Tarhan realized he had not breathed properly since the tune began.

He let the breath go with a little hiss he was not proud of. He made himself roll the video back with his thumb, and then, because he already felt filthy, watched it again.

He saw details he had missed: the way the first two soldiers closest to the tank vanished entirely while the third had a spine to drop, the metal links on the treads coming off in stringers, the way the tank’s turret turned almost lazily as it went up, empty, showing the camera the open mouth of its barrel and nothing behind it before it flung out of frame.

The pink clung in the air afterwards like the vapor of sunsets on summer days. He hated the shiver it sent down his spine.

He watched to the sigil again and then closed the feed, putting the datapad outside as he took out his earbuds with shaky hands. A deep breath.

The shop was as before. Derrek was wiping the same oval with the same cloth. The fan above squawked once and creaked and soldiered on. Tarhan stared at his hands. He stood up, and his stool scraped the floor with a shriek that made Derrek flinch.
“Boss,” Tarhan said.

Derrek glanced his way, then to the grill, then back again. “Mmh?”

“Can I go? Early. There’s… I did the tables.”

Derrek held the cloth in the air like a captured flag. “You polished them. But did you do the legs? People’s feet, they leave—”

“Also the legs, yes.” Tarhan kept his voice careful. “Twice.” He had not done them twice, but had done them once well, and that was near enough to twice in any book that mattered.

“The register?”

“Counted. The same it was, almost.”

“You scrubbed the—”

“Floors?” Tarhan said, a little too fast. “Yes. Twice. Even did the edge under the counter where it gets sticky.”

Derrek sighed, long as a slow train, and let his shoulders sag under the weight of all his hands. He looked toward the door as if expecting salvation to come marching through. Nothing walked past but the wind and a piece of trash that had lived better days as a sandwich paper. “Go,” he said at last. “Go then, boy. I’ll close in a little bit… I think I’ll sit with the grill and polish him a sixth time.” He swallowed, lips pressed together. “Your paycheck—”

“I know,” Tarhan said. “It’s fine, I understand.”

“It’s not fine.” Derrek stared at the grill so he didn’t have to stare at Tarhan. “I won’t cheat you. You’re a good kid. Just… not today. Bring your father in one night, eh? I’ll feed him. It’ll be good to have the old chief around again, ey?” He smiled, or tried to, running two of his hands over his scalp. “You should eat something too, Tarhan, or the wind’ll carry you off.”

Tarhan nodded. “I’ll get something on the way home,” he said, and untied his apron, folding it into a narrow bundle.

He could imagine Derrek wearing grief like a bandolier. He put the apron under the counter and took his pad and slung his jacket over one shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. He meant: thank you for telling me you won’t cheat me. Thank you for talking about my father without asking if he had gone yellow and soft like the rumors said aliens do when you take their jobs.

The bell over the door chimed for the second time that day, marking his leaving like a sick private joke.

Outside, the day had bled into the hour when the city found its neon. Nam’ta Prime’s poorer blocks wore light like makeup, lines of color laying along the rain sluices and tracing out the cracks in stone. Tarhan tucked his pad into his jacket and set his feet for home. He kept to the side streets where the vendors knew him and the light smelled like the spices they burned to cover the smell of oil. Flats opened above in little balconies where women watered sour plants and the runoff splashed the passersby.
A Rodian cut a Bothan’s hair with clippers in a doorway.

As he turned the corner he passed a mural he had not seen the day before.

Fresh paint showed in the wet gloss. Ralter had the body of a horse in it, ridiculous long teeth and eyes pointing different ways like compass needles gone drunk. The artist had given her a bit, a saddle, and reins. And then, having already gone far enough, went further, setting her skittering beneath a thin rider whose nose and tight moustache wanted to be the whole portrait.

Kaldon, he imagined. His cloak was white and too big, a child wearing his father’s robe. A little brass plaque on his chest, oversized so one could read the figure was a Commodore.

Ralter had a silver platter in her forehooves, and on it the Nam’ta system, done like a child’s model with orbit rings and moons etched around the red bead of the Nam’ta gas giant.

She offered it up to a giant, green-and-gangrene troll in a white uniform, stained the color of old rust in places where blood does not reach. The face was a joke, a monstrous frog with sagging eyes and a cruel smirk lined with pointed teeth, nearly drowning in the fat rolls of his gibs. Moff Graush rendered in the shape artists reserved for monsters that had eaten villages in children’s stories.

The fatness did the work of two paragraphs of invective. Tarhan stopped in the neon-lit puddle at his boots and looked up at the thing until he felt absurd and still looked a heartbeat longer. Then he shook his head, half a grin on his mouth he didn’t feel. The artist had been brave and obvious. And from what he saw on the holos, the portrait of Graush was strikingly accurate. He wondered how long the thing would last before a brush of gray erased it back to wall.

He went on.

The alleys wound tighter in the old blocks and collected smells like coins: frying batter, the iron of cheap blood, damp clothes that never dried in the shade. As he walked he realized he was humming, and then realized what he was humming. “Go on home, Imperial soldiers…” He sang under his breath, the way a man talks to himself about bread and does not know he is hungry until he hears it.

“Go on home…” he mumbled. “…You’ll never ever beat the—”

“What was that, boy?!”


The voice came from a kink in the alley where the neon died and the wet concrete shined black as a boot. Tarhan stopped dead in his tracks.

The man who stepped out of the shadow wore the uniform of the Nam’ta Security Forces, the new version with the Imperial banner stitched where the Confederate sigil had been, like a rag to stop a hole. He was a big man with heavy wrists and a belly that said he ate at his leisure. His hair retreated from a forehead creased with the thinking he clearly seldom did. He had a stunstick at his hip and a blaster pistol he wore low like a promise.

The man stepped forward and set a palm on Tarhan’s chest, pushing the young Zabrak, not hard, but hard enough to make his back touch the wall. Tarhan took a breath and swallowed the song whole.

“Nothing!” he said, knowing the punishment for aliens associating with the rebellion. “Nothing! I wasn’t! I was—" 

The man’s eyes narrowed as he parted his lips to speak before they widened with something between recognition and pity. “You’re one of Zerrin’s boys, ain’t ya?” he said, letting go as he stepped back as if someone had called his name. “Zerrin Vahs. Used to be captain of the local riot forces…”

Tarhan rubbed at his jacket where the push had landed, and nodded. “My father, aye.” he said.

“How is he?” The man’s voice went solemn, the way men talk about ill kin. “I heard… well, I heard what they did to him. ‘Deemed surplus.’”

Tarhan nodded. “He’s looking,” he said. “For a new job.”

“Hmm.” The man’s mouth made a shape that wanted to be pity and settled for tired. “They told us about reorganization. Efficiency. Imperial standards. You say the words enough it sounds like a prayer. New flag, new stripes, same old blisters. Zebb.” He tapped his chest with two fingers. “Sergeant Zebb.”

“Tarhan,” Tarhan said, as if the sergeant did not know. He tried to make his shoulders settle away from the wall.

Zebb nodded at the alley mouth where the neon cast pale shapes on the wet floor. “Tell your old man I said hello… and mind where you sing, Tarhan Vahs,” he said. “I know where that tune is from, boy, and the Imperials—” He lifted a hand and let it fall. “They don’t have an ear for humor. And they have a taste for handing out hard labor off-world. Twenty years for a song if they say it’s sedition. Thirty for a flag the wrong way up. Thirty-five for spitting if the spit lands where it shouldn’t.”

He looked at Tarhan as if to put a blessing on the boy and found his hand empty instead. “Tell your father… tell him I wish him luck. And tell him I had no say, none of us did… It’s the Empire did all that nasty business.”

“Aye? And yet you still wear their uniform,” Tarhan said before he could stop himself, and flicked a glance at the new banner stitched on Zebb’s sleeve.

Zebb looked at it too, as if surprised to find it there. “Aye,” he said. “Somebody’s got to hold the door while the wolves pass… I still serve Nam’ta, and when these rebels are gone the Imps will leave us to ourselves again too…” He said, his eyes glazing over as if that is what he told himself to sleep at night. He shifted on his feet. “Go on home, boy. And be careful with your songs.” He hesitated. “Maybe stick to the old ones. The ones we sang before the cords on our throats grew  so tight.”


Tarhan slid out of the alley’s pinch and back into the street, and Zebb did not follow. He thought of telling his father about the encounter and then thought of the way his father’s mouth did not make much of smiles since dismissal, and kept the thought in his pocket instead.

The housing blocks rose with the dull authority of bad news, their faces pocked from decades of edits and undoings, laundry lines pulled like tripwires across inner courtyards. Since the dismissal they had moved into the three-room that barely took the couch they had and a table a cousin had given them begrudgingly. His little brother’s school was three stops farther, his mother said she liked the walk, and Tarhan pretended to believe her.

From two streets away he saw the smoke. Not the cooking smoke or the cold-weather ghost of bad heaters, but the clean, strong scent of something meant to frighten. He smelled the ash before he reached the corner. Then he heard the orders and saw them. Real soldiers; Imperial, the color of storms. They made triangles at the entrances with their bodies, lines tight and rifles held in the bored alert of men who expect to shoot, and might just do so if it would end the tedious task ahead.

They had surrounded the neighborhood, armored speeders and prison shuttles nearby. A corridor to block off any escape as the rest of their unit went to work.

The people who lived there, most of them aliens, were being hustled down the stairs by squads and stripped of belts and shoelaces as if they might hang themselves on the way to the shuttles. Taken out of their homes; told to leave to the shuttles. Once arriving outside, hands were bound in bright flex that cut skin like wire.

Tarhan could see blinds were torn from windows and the rooms behind laid out like organs, everything intimate and wrong under the open look of soldiers who didn’t see. Suitcases packed by those with more time to prepare as the Imperials made their way through the housing blocks were opened on the staircases and balconies, the contents poured into communal piles on the concrete, then kicked apart with the toes of boots. “No baggage!” one of the Imperials barked, flatly, as if the word had been a rebellion that needed to be stamped out.

The voice was echoed by another, then another. “No baggage!” A little girl cried because a soldier had taken her doll and thrown it into the pile that used to be breakfast bowls and shirts.

Somebody’s holo-radio played a dance song and then stuttered into static. A man tried to pick up a photograph that had slid and received a baton across the wrist that left a purple welt in the shape of a country he did not know. There was blaster fire somewhere inside, short and efficient, and then another burst like punctuation.

Tarhan stopped as if his bones had been pulled out and the meat left to learn balance. The world narrowed until it had room for only two faces: his mother’s, the set of her mouth when she bent over Eolat’s shoes, and Eolat’s, sticky with breakfast, his horns little budding curls as soft as any child’s hair. They were inside. Of course they were inside. They would have been at home waiting for him to finish and say how quiet it had been and they would have pretended it was enough.

As he watched the smoke rise from the housing block echoing with blaster fire and the cold shouts of Imperial diction he knew. Knew as well as the singer on the rooftop had known the next line of his song. That his mother was in that smoke and his brother besides her.

“Mom! Eolat!” he shouted, and the sound of his brother’s name in his own mouth gave him courage or made him twice the fool. He did not care which.

He ran forward…

[Krassus Horuset]

CHAPTER II: Eolat

The bell-buzzer was already ringing when Eolat reached the large sliding door, the sound echoing sharp and tinny through the schoolyard. The other kids rushed in, urged by the educationalist droids to take off their coats and shoes.

Eolat tried his hardest to navigate the organized chaos, shoulders squeezed between the other children rushing in after recess, their chatter buzzing around him like birds in the morning trees.

Shoes clattered on tiles and coats were hung on their hooks as the children streamed through the halls to their classrooms.

Most of them human.

Eolat remembered how his father had once told him that this was a special school; one of the best in the neighborhood! Most of the other children's parents also worked for the Government; or in the security forces.
Like dad. They should’ve had so much in common; but still he always felt out of place. Never more so than recently. After they had moved to the new house; the one with the stinky hallway that reeked of Akk pee, and the loud neighbor who always smelled of drink.

An ugly place. So little space. And far away from school too! Eolat never understood why they moved there.

He had asked his dad why they couldn't just stay at the old home? His dad never answered; and his mother had only told him that this was all for the best; and he'd understand when he was older. He doubted that. How could any of this ever make sense? It didn't.
But somehow he suspected it had something to do with the changing of all the flags.

He had always liked the old flags; proud and green. Like the logo on daddy's uniform. The new ones were red, the kind of red that hurt to look at, marked with an ugly symbol like something sharp enough to cut you.

Everything had gotten so much worse after the flags changed. No doubt the new apartment was also their fault.

At least he got to stay at his old school; his mom had promised him that. But two times now he had not been allowed into class; with Miss Harna asking to see some permit whose names he couldn't recall. He didn't have it though, he recalled that. His mom was called; and he went home. And then to the local government building where he was given the permit. And his mom told him to always carry it and keep it safe.

The next day he was allowed back into class; and he was happy about that! The day after that as well, and the day after, and the one after that. But when the next week started; Miss Harna said he needed a different permit. Which didn't make a lot of sense; he already had the other one. And he always went to class. So why did he need the stupid chit anyways? Miss Harna insisted it was the rules; and took him to the headmaster. There he would wait again until his mother came to pick him up to get the NEW permit.

At least with that one he was allowed to visit class. Which was nice. But he still didn't like the permit. It was red. Like the flags. And he didn't understand why he needed it. The other kids didn’t! Even though he really believed they should. Or at least there should be a permit that said you were nice enough to be allowed in. Most of the other kids wouldn’t have it. Because they weren't nice, not anymore anyways.

He had never quite felt at place at school but ever since the flags changed and they moved houses a lot of the kids were suddenly mean to him. They ignored him, or didn't play with him. Most never explained why. Others, who at least tried to seem sad about ignoring him, admitted that it was because their parents told them not to. That didn't make it any better.

Eolat felt so alone. Lagging behind the rest of his class. He stopped to grab his permit from his backpack as he approached the classroom. 

Miss Harna stood in the doorway like always, greeting the arrivals. Most slipped past without notice, taking their seats, laying out datapads. But as he tried to follow, holding out his permit, a gentle hand stopped him.

“Eolat...”

Her voice was soft, always soft, the sort that made children cry less when they scraped their knees. She stood in the doorway with her long dress brushing her shoes, kneeling down in front of Eolat as the rest of the kids rushed in. Eyes bright with kindness even as she shook her head.

“Has your mother told you you needed to bring a new permit this week?” she asked. Voice low, like she'd hoped he'd forgotten it in his bag. But her face already knew the answer.

Eolat blinked at her. He had no other permit. His mom had only put this one in his bag. Was he going to miss class again today? No. Why? His fingers clutched the strap of his backpack tighter.

Miss Harna's smile broke, falling into pieces. “Oh, love,” she murmured. “I'm sorry, dear.” She looked back into the room, to the other children already busy, letting out a soft sigh before she leaned down again. “I'm sorry. But you can't stay without the new permit. They'll check.”

He still didn't understand who they were, or why not having a permit meant he couldn't sit at his desk and draw letters like the others. Or why he needed a new one, was the old one not good enough? He wanted to ask, to cry, to scream. But instead he nodded, because her hand was warm when it closed over his.

“Come on,” she said. “We'll see the headmaster and get you a glass of juice so you can wait for your mama.” Her fingers wrapped around his as they walked, and it felt safe. Like when his mother held him. She walked slow, as if the hallway would stretch longer that way, and the office might never come. The hall smelled of dust and floor polish, some of the screens on the walls displayed crooked pictures drawn by hand by the students. Houses, suns, the red Nam'ta, families holding hands. His footsteps sounded loud on the tiles, as though every child in every room might hear him walking by. Or so he thought.

Miss Harna's grip was careful, not tight but steady, as if he might float away if she let go.

The office was dimmer, the carpet worn thin, a vibro-fan in the corner stirring the air without cooling it. She sat him in an old creaky chair, whose leather pad had long since worn down. Got him his glass of juice and then patted his cheek. “It'll be all right, hun. She'll be here soon, then you can grab the new pass and be right back to class tomorrow.”

He swung his legs, watching the shadows crawl across the floor for who knows how long. He finished his juice and some of the crackers the headmaster's assistant brought him some time later. Through the window he could see the sun was already getting lower. He even napped a little in the chair, until his mother's voice cut through the shadows in the room.

“This again?” she barked, bursting through the door like a storm had blown it open.

 “This is the third time. Third time in two months. He's a child! He needs to be in class!”

The headmaster, a pale man with hair combed flat to his skull, spread his hands as he followed her out of his office. Eolat had not even seen her enter. “Madam Vahs, it is not our decision. These are Imperial laws. Our—” He stopped, and cleared his throat. “Non-human students were required to update their C7-5 permit to a C7-5B permit by the start of this week. We are simply trying to abide by the governor's new regulations.”

Her words sharpened, words like blades. “He's six years old! Just a boy! We got the old permit just some weeks ago and now this!”

The headmaster flinched, but didn't budge. Sighing once. “I am sorry, Madam. Truly I am... But until your son has the proper permits filled out, there is nothing I can do.”

Sorry.

They were always so sorry. But it never stopped them from sending him away. It never changed anything. His mother's hand clamped down on his shoulder, pulling him to her side. He could feel the anger in her fingers, hot through his shirt.

“Come, Eolat,” she said. “We're leaving.”





The street outside was loud and bright, too bright, the kind of glare that made Eolat squint and hide his face in his mother’s sleeve. Speeders hummed and buzzed overhead, the shadows of their wings sliding across the ground like long black fish in shallow water. People passed quick, coats pulled tight, eyes down.

His mother’s steps were sharp, each one snapping against the pavement. She said nothing, her hand heavy on his shoulder. He could feel the heat of her anger through his jacket, but also the firmness that meant don’t ask, not now.
The shouting came before he saw them.

“Parasites!” one voice rang, rough as gravel.

Another joined in, mocking, “Crawling through our streets like rats. You think we don’t see you? Republic dogs!”

They stood in the mouth of a side alley, three men swaying on their feet. Bottles dangled from their hands, brown glass glinting in the light. Two leaned against the wall, laughing, but the one in front pointed straight at them, his teeth yellow in his grin. A strip of cloth was taped to his sleeve—the ugly new flag, red and sharp, its symbol crooked where it wrinkled over his arm.

“You hear me?” he barked. “Spies! That’s what you are. All of you.”

“Traitors,” another spat, liquid slopping from his bottle onto the street. “Barracas’ little helpers, sneaking in and out of our city, reporting to your rebel friends.”

The third man snorted and staggered forward half a step, raising his bottle in a toast. “Parasites. A stain on Nam’tees society, that’s what you are. Should’ve been cleared out long ago.”

Their voices tangled, echoing off the stone like thunder. Eolat’s chest went tight. He didn’t understand everything; rebels, traitors, spies, but he knew the tone, knew the hate.
Mama’s grip pressed harder on his shoulder, fingers digging in. “Keep walking,” she murmured. Her voice was low but sharp enough to cut.

Eolat tried. He kept his eyes low, fixed on the pavement. But the bottle came flying.

It spun through the air, catching the sun for a heartbeat before it shattered against the wall beside them. Glass burst outward, spraying across the ground like tiny stars. The sour stink of drink hit him at once, burning in his nose and throat. He jumped, heart hammering, pressing closer into his mother’s side.

The men jeered louder. One barked a laugh that carried down the street, another hissed out words Eolat didn’t know, but they sounded ugly and sharp, like the red symbol on their flags.

“Eyes down,” Mama murmured. Her hand came over his head, gently but firmly pushing him forward. “Don’t look at them. Don’t listen. Just walk.”

So he walked.

He stared at the pavement, at the cracks in the stone, at the faded paint of old crosswalk lines. He counted them as they went. One, two, three, four. Numbers to fill the space where the shouts tried to get in. The voices behind them grew smaller, swallowed by the hum of speeders and the hiss of the city air.

Mama’s steps stayed sharp, her arm firm around him. She didn’t look back once.




Back at the apartment, Mama’s hand loosened on his shoulder. She knelt to his level, brushing his hair back with fingers that still trembled.

“Go play outside, Eolat,” she said. Her voice was calm, too calm, the kind of calm that made him know she was still angry, still afraid. “I need to make some calls.”

He wanted to ask what calls, who she would speak to, if they were about him. But she had already turned toward the commset, her jaw tight. So he slipped out the side vent, knees scraping metal, and wriggled under the wire fence where his shirt caught and tugged. He knew the way by heart: past the rusted pipe, across the cracked stone, then down the narrow path where the smell of frying oil from the neighbor’s window always clung to the air.

The play place waited at the end. The swings creaked, the frame for climbing bent like old bones. The sandpit was more dirt than sand, but it was theirs. Children were already there, voices high and bright, chasing each other through the dust.

The children who gathered there were like him: sons and daughters of clerks, dock hands, street vendors. Most were alien, with horns, tails, or patterned skin. Some were human, but not many, and none who came from the tall houses with shining windows. This was the place for the poor, the overlooked. But here, for now, it didn’t matter.

Eolat joined without asking, slipping into their game. They ran, tagged, squealed when caught. Dust puffed under their heels, laughter carried through the air. For a little while, it was only the game.
Then the sound came.

Deep. Heavy. Bigger than thunder. The ground seemed to hum beneath his shoes. Shadows fell over the play place. They all stopped, eyes wide, heads tilted to the sky.

Shuttles.

Great gray hulls slid down through the clouds, their bellies glowing. Engines roared so loud the swings shook. The older kids exchanged quick looks, their faces turned serious, and one by one they ran. Vanished into doorways, across courtyards, back to mothers who were already calling from balconies.

But Eolat stayed. His mouth hung open.

From the shuttles poured soldiers. Black armor, trimmed in red. The ugly new symbol marked their shoulders and glared above their visors, as if they carried the flags inside their very skin.

Their faces hidden behind glossy visors that shone black, faceless, unbroken by eyes. They marched out in perfect lines. Boots striking together as one, rifles slung tight against their chests. precise and flawless.
Like toys wound tight. 
And to Eolat it was the most wonderful thing he had seen in a while. Like the heroes from the holo-serials, stepping straight out of the sky. Despite the ugly flag on their armor; to see all of them march in lines was one of the coolest things he had ever seen.
Until he noticed that the lines were moving to form a ring around the housing block.


A speaker cracked to life, mounted on the belly of the nearest shuttle. The voice came deep and harsh, carried across the blocks so no one could pretend not to hear.

“Residents of this sector: you have been found guilty of harboring enemies of the Empire. This district is known to shelter agents and spies of Barracas, traitors and terrorists who seek to destroy order. To destroy Nam'ta.”

The voice rolled on, hammering each word. Cold, precise, Imperial diction.

“For your failure to report their presence, all of you are now suspect of collaboration. Until every family here has been questioned, no one will be spared. Any who resist Imperial justice will be treated as guilty. Any who run will be judged rebels themselves.”

A pause. Then the sentence, sharp and final:

“The punishment is death.”




The words tangled in his ears. He didn’t understand all of them. Collaboration, agents, terrorists, but he knew enough. He knew the tone, the hatred. It was the same hatred in the voice of the drunks on the streets. He knew the way the soldiers moved as they spread through the blocks.

His awe soured into something heavy in his stomach. The soldiers were not toys. Not heroes. Not safe.

Screams began to rise. Spilling from the housing blocks as if the buildings themselves had begun to cry. Boots thundered against stairwells, heavy and merciless. Doors slammed, then shattered under iron heels and breaching tools. Voices shouted orders in words too quick for Eolat to follow.

He froze at the edge of the play place, dust clinging to his skin.

The soldiers moved with machine precision, spreading in lines, cutting off alleys and exits. Families poured out of apartments, dragged into the courtyards by armored hands. Clothes and food spilled onto the street; tumbling down from balconies as the soldiers robbed those with the foresight to pack emergency bags of their possessions. 
A woman begged in a voice that broke, clutching her child to her chest. A soldier tore the child away. He could see the shape of the man who smelled like drink lunge at the soldiers that dragged him out of his apartment, swinging with empty hands. There was a flash of crimson, a sound like a thunderbolt. 

The man fell, chest smoking. 

Eolat's legs started moving before he thought about it. He ran.

All around him, chaos.

He glimpsed a boy he’d played tag with only minutes ago. His father was shouting, straining against the soldiers pulling him back. One of them lifted his rifle and fired. The father dropped at once, crumpled on the stones. The boy screamed and tried to run, but another soldier caught him with the butt of a rifle in his stomach. He folded in half, wheezing, before being hoisted up by the arms. Two soldiers carried him like a sack, and then a third raised his weapon. The blast was quick, final. The boy went still.

The soldiers shouted at one another, furious; but not at the killing. One screamed because the shot had come too close to him. They argued as if nothing had happened, as if the boy’s small body was no more than a crate dropped in the wrong place.

Eolat stumbled, dust and glass scraping under his shoes. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. The cries rang in his ears, louder and louder.

He darted toward a vent he knew, the one that ran beneath the stairwell. He wriggled inside, chest scraping metal, heart pounding in his ears. He crawled and crawled, until the narrow space opened into the kitchen of his home.

Mama sat stiff at the table. An officer loomed above her, not in armor but in a uniform in the same ugly black and red, the ugly symbol stitched into the fabric. This one did not have a visor. His face sharp and empty, the kind that didn’t bend or soften.

“Where is your husband?” the officer demanded.

“He left us,” Mama said quickly. Her voice trembled but did not break. “Weeks ago. We don’t know where. He abandoned us.”

The word stung. Abandoned. It sank into Eolat like a stone. Papa hadn’t abandoned them. Had he?

“And your sons?”

“They aren’t here,” Mama insisted. “One’s at school. The other’s at work.”

The officer’s hand flashed across her face. She gasped, clutching her cheek. “Do not lie. We searched both. The boys were not there.”

“Don’t hurt Mama!” Eolat cried, tumbling out of the vent before he could stop himself.

The officer’s head snapped toward him. “Alive,” he ordered. “Take him. The children will be useful.”

“Run!” Mama screamed. She lunged across the table, knocking over a cup as she clawed for the officer’s arm. 

A shot rang out. 

Eolat didn't look back. He ran.

The hallways were not home anymore. Doors gaped like broken mouths, hinges torn, locks smashed. Clothes were strewn across the floor, shirts and trousers trampled into the dust, shoes lying without their pairs. A pot had rolled from someone’s kitchen, its handle bent, soup long since burned into black crust at the bottom.

The air was thick and wrong. Smoke drifted low, stinging his eyes. It smelled like firecrackers from festival days, only sharper, crueler, with something sour underneath that made his stomach turn. Somewhere above, boots thundered against the stairwells, heavy and merciless. From far down the corridor came the sharp crack of another door kicked open, then a scream that cut off too quickly.

Eolat crept past open rooms. Some were empty, walls bare and echoing. Others were not. He kept his eyes low, but still caught flashes—a hand sticking out from behind a door, still as stone; a chair overturned, its leg broken; a datapad flickering with lines of code no one was reading. His chest ached, his breath came shallow.

A hand seized his collar and yanked him off his feet. A soldier stared down at him, visor gleaming red in the glow of firelight. The grin beneath it was wide and cruel.

“Well, what have we here?” the man sneered. “Running off, little spy?”

“I’m not—”

"No?" The soldier laughed, shaking him by the scruff like a caught animal. "Then what are you hmm? One of Barracas' little couriers? Running messages for your traitor friends?"

"No!" Eolat said, his legs kicking the air. "I am not a rebel!"

"Only rebels run." The soldier said, tutting slightly, clicking his rongue off the roof of his mouth. On his chest Eolat could see a symbol he hadn't seen before.  Stylised letters; Aurek... Cresh... Isk. 

The soldier grinned; as the light caught his visor Eolat could see the cold black eyes and the yellowed teeth of the frog faced man beneath. 

He straightened Eolat's shirt with mock care, brushing dust from his chest as he put his feet back on the ground. “Let’s take a picture, eh? My buddy’s a fine cameraman. Stand tall. Smile. Wait for the flash.”

He held Eolat tightly by the shoulder as another soldier stepped out of the darkness of the apartment. Raising his blaster. 

Flash.

Pain bloomed white and burning. His chest folded, air gone. The world blurred and tilted sideways. 

Somewhere, faint as a dream, he thought he heard his brother's voice calling his name.

The rasp of the officer he had seen with mama shouting something; as if from miles away.

Then all went silent....