The Last Days of Empire

[Micah tol Powl]

THE PLANET
C O R U S C A N T
845 ABY | FOUR YEARS EARLIER

It was known as Coco Town.

For most, it was as far down as one could go in the ecumenopolis, the city which was the planet. As such, it featured such quaint and archaic things as streets or avenues. There was a sense of this being the ground, something that people would live their entire lives on Coruscant and die without ever experiencing. There were railways here, not sky cabs. It was the last bastion of the working-class man. Home to everything blue collar.

Including labor unions, organized crime, and the ubiquitous red light district that seemed perpetuated by both.

However, it wasn't the bottom. That was the realm of the Undercity, that forsaken realm that now occupied the forgotten mantle of the planet. The last refuge of dying men. Homelessness. Vagrancy. Nothing good came of the Undercity, and so the people seemed content to leave their trash undisturbed. Occasionally a sanitation task force would be dispatched by the government of the One Sith, burning the shanty towns of the impoverished and sending its occupants either to a debtors prison or into hiding. There seemed no other option for any of them other than those possible outcomes.

There was no place for them in the light.

Coruscant was a world where the higher you stood, the more you were worth. As spire inspired only another ziggarut, soon the lattice work of buildings had created a multitude of iron and concrete layers, shutting out the lower levels from being able to view a sky. Because the sky was the sole realm of their betters. And the people of Coruscant demanded that those of lower stratus respect their place. It was how the society worked. It was how civility was structured. Those who had, stood tall. Those without bowed low.

And the Dark Lords of the Sith ruled all.

The boy was barefoot. There were blisters on the soles of his feet. He could barely walk, but he was trying. He was Pantoran, though his skin was an unhealthy pallor of blue from the lack of exposure to light. He was emaciated, skin stretch taunt over bones that seemed to be jutting out from underneath. He was a miserable looking thing, with clothes that were ragged and unwashed.

He might have been all of seven years old.

He held a battered cup in one hand, shuffling among the tourists and visitors to Coco Town as he begged shamelessly. For what? For anything. Food. Credits. Clothes. Shoes. It was all the same to him.

When you had nothing, everything was of equal value.

 

[Micah tol Powl]

THE PLANET
C O R U S C A N T
846 ABY | THREE YEARS EARLIER

There were callouses over the blisters now.

And his feet were dressed in an old pair of shoes that had been tossed out. They were held together by tape and wrappings that were badly frayed, but they hadn't lost any of their value. A pair of shoes down here was worth more than a person's life.

He'd only been allowed to keep them because they were too small to fit any of the bigger kids.

Sprinting down the alleyway, the blue-skinned Pantoran was running as though his arse was on fire and his head was catching. He might have said he was running as though his life depended on it, but there wasn't a lot of stock put into the lives of street urchins, and he was moving like it really mattered. So it seemed as though whatever was motivating him, it was worth a lot more than his meager life.

Jumping up from the ground, the boy made the landing on top of a dumpster. Springing from off the top, the boy bounced to the other side of the small alleyway. Planting his foot against the side of the building, he pushed off, propelling himself in a diagonal leap that brought him within arm's reach of the fire escape that was three meters off the ground.

Like a gymnast on the uneven bars. the boy's hands wrapped around the metal rods of the fire escape. Swinging his legs, the child swung his body weight to create momentum, then flipped up so that he vaulted from underneath the fire escape to land on top of it's lower level. Then, crouching down beneath the railing, the boy paused to catch his breath.

He had a bad feeling about this.

It had started off normal enough. He spotted a mark in Coco Town and then positioned himself so that he'd bumped into the stranger. The physical contact had served as a distraction while the boy had artfully freed the man's credit cube from out of the folds of the clothing that he wore.

He just hadn't expected the mark to catch on so quickly.

...or still be chasing him, six city blocks later.

And, indeed, the arrival of a long shadow cast down the alleyway heralded the arrival of the slow, yet steady advance of his mark. Seeing the silhouette framed against the alleyway entrance, the boy snapped back into motion. Racing up the rungs of the fire escape's ladder, the boy was moving up toward the roof level. What he was going to do when he got there... he actually had no idea. This had actually never happened before in his long career of pickpocketing.

Sure, he'd heard or seen this kind of thing all the time. A kid was picking over the tourists and someone got caught. And, sometimes, that meant that someone wound up dead. As in the case of Bondi, who'd just been tossed into a dumpster after the guy had finished slitting his throat open.

The Pantoran had no such ideas of that happening to him.

He has about two-thirds up the ladder when he heard some kind of snap-hiss echo up from the alley below. It was a sound he'd never heard before, but he knew this much: He knew he didn't like it.

...and right about that moment, the hairs stood up on the nape of his neck.

DUCK!

Tucking into a ball, the Pantoran dived between the side of the building and the rickety escape ladder, shielding his head as he felt something white-hot go sailing past. There was a hideous sound, like that of metal welding, as a shower of sparks raining down on top of him.

Then he felt the fire escape shudder violently. A sense of doom and vertigo hit him in the gut, as he realized that the upper part of the fire escape was starting to lean away from the building. With the screech of metal succumbing to fatigue, gravity took hold and the whole lattice work was starting to come down.

Planting a foot up on the guard railing, the young Pantoran made a jump for the window ledge of the building next door...

 

[Micah tol Powl]

THE PLANET
C O R U S C A N T
846 ABY | THREE YEARS EARLIER

The life of an eight year old Pantoran is not for the faint of heart.

As the fire escape fell out from underneath him, the child made an 'all or nothing' leap for a window ledge on the other side of the alleyway. By chance or some divine providence, he made it. His body slammed up against the side of the building, the impact knocking the wind from him even as he held fast to the ledge above with all his strength. The fingers were burning, as he clawed and grasped through the pain for a handhold.

The tips of his shoes scraped against the duracrete, the child shimmying as he fought his way upward. Meanwhile, the fire escape collapsed, meeting an end as it came crashing down onto the dumpster in a truly horrific sound. Scrambling up and over the ledge, the boy went vaulting through the open window. Tucked into a ball, the boy flipped end-over-end, finding himself sliding across a breakfast table and taking most of what was on top of it with him.

"Comin' through!" the boy cried in warning.

On the plus side, he totally just snagged a half-eaten waffle off that guy's plate. Which, was totally the guy's fault. Who leaves a waffle only half-eaten?

Feet sliding over the linoleum, the boy was once again sprinting. Weaving through the doorways, he hesitated as he searched for the way out. Then, once in the hallway, was making for an escape. A lift. A stairwell. Anything.

Waffle stuck in his teeth, the blue-skinned boy found a doorway leading to a set of stairs that looked as though they'd lead him to the roof. Round and round the flights he went. Lungs burning, legs pounding, and his heart feeling as though it were about to explode.

He made the top of the stairs and hit the door controls with the full weight of his body, sagging up against the side of the doorway. As the door slid away, there was the dark silhouette of the figure. He heard the same snap-hiss sound as before, louder this time, and bore witness to some kind of red laser sword burning in the man's hand.

"Wrong floor!" the boy deadpanned, jumping back. Looking to his left and right, the child nimbly dodged a downward strike of the laser sword. Bounding back, against the wall, he pushed off with his feet, jumping over the blade as it slammed against the ground. Making the landing on the guard rail of the stairwell he'd just come up, the child went sliding down to make an escape.

Something stopped him.

His mind reeling, the boy felt himself lifted up. Legs dangling as his feet kicked in vain as he hovered in mid-air. Then, slowly, the boy moved backward until he floated just a few inches away from the dark man.

"That is far enough."

 

[Micah tol Powl]

THE PLANET
C O R U S C A N T
846 ABY | THREE YEARS EARLIER

The dark man smelled of smoke, ash, and whisky.

He'd dragged the squirming, writhing child through the ecumenopolis. No one batted an eye, or even looked their way despite the boy's protests. And, as they climbed higher and higher through the strata of Coruscant's urban jungle, it became clearer and clearer as to why.

Almost everything he could see from out of the large windows was sky. The spire that the man had brought him to was a structure that dominated the skyline of the city. The opulent mansion outfitted with all manner of strange and grotesque decorations. Ornate weapons. Exotic suits of armor. A garden of carnivorous, voracious, and venomous plants.

The child was tossed like a sack of trash.

Landing hard on his shoulder, the boy hardly had time with which to recover, as the sound of a loud hiss prompted him to scurry back quickly. A trio of snapping jaws narrowly missed his head and arms, as the boy scrambled back a meter or more. Sitting on his knees, the breathless, panting, child was presented by a creature unlike any he had ever seen. It was like a flower on the ground, except it had teeth. Actual, serrated jaws. And thick vines, which moved as though with a life of their own, and capped with the head of a snake.

"A gardener is no good to me if they're afraid of the plants."

The voice made the boy remember that the dark man was there. As he looked up, the shadowy figure had his back to the child. Standing over a bar table, pouring himself some kind of amber liquid from out of a crystal decanter.

It seemed an opportunity for the boy to make a run for it, but as he looked around, he saw no easy avenue for such an escape. And that was when the feeling of hopelessness for his situation began to set in. A deep-seated sense of dread welling up from the pit of his soul.

"Your life is over."

As the man spoke again, the boy looked back up at him. Nursing a tumbler with a few cubes of ice, the dark man casually walked around the potted amphistaff until he'd come around to the other side of the boy. Reaching down, the man took hold of the child by the chin. Pulling up, he painfully jerked the boy back to his feet. "I keep you alive to serve me," the dark man uttered coldly. Jerking up on the child's chin, the man forced the boy to look him in the eyes as he added, "Serve well and live."

As his hand released it's vice grip on the boy's jaw, an invisible force seemed to leap out to tackle the boy, knocking him to the ground even as it purged the breath from out of his lungs.

"...for now."

 

[Micah tol Powl]

THE PLANET
C O R U S C A N T
847 ABY | TWO YEARS EARLIER

"...and coming into the third lap, Ki-yo Marr is lobbying for second with local favorite, Pritek Jett."

"Hang on, Gore, we've got some motion from back in the pack."

"OH! That little Kushiban has lost his mind!"

"And his front stabilizer."

"There goes our contestant from Coco Town, too. Medical crews are already out on the track."

"Sprinting out from the wreck, Orto Plutonia's on the map."

"Looks that way, Br'ar. Moving up from number seven, now in fourth position, Boo Chiyo."


Shifting his weight to the left, the boy pitched the speeder to the side as a hunk of flaming debris went rocketing wildly past. He could feel the heat as the jagged metal passed within an inch of his head. The roar of the repulsors drowned out any sound from the wreckage, as the young boy shot past the wreckage without ever even being aware of it. Just a blur in a landscape of color.

At seven hundred kilometers an hour, a mistake wasn't something you recovered from. The shielding, the protective clothing, the padding in the helmet... prophylactic pleasantries that were meant to reassure the mind even while offering almost no protection against serious bodily injury at these speeds. His visual reflexes weren't fast enough at these speeds so, in actuality, the boy spent a great deal of the race with his eyes closed. With the ear protection and the drone of the repulsorlift engines, it created a pocket of utter serenity in which the boy had learned to just live in the moment.

He could feel the track beneath him. The other drivers. Even the air moving in to the engine intakes. Everything in motion. Everything connected. Cyclical.Actions, reactions. A cascade of events, playing out in his mind's eye. It was in this moment, surrounded by so much noise as to have heard nothing, that Boo experienced a feeling like none other. Suddenly, nothing was important and everything made sense.

Ratcheting back the throttle on the bike, the boy punched the speeder on further.

Not satisfied that gardening or tending to the dust on the shelves as a house boy was enough to make up for his crime against one of the Dark Lords of the Sith, his self-proclaimed master had deemed that the boy should work off his debt in the illegal swoop racing tracks of the lower levels. It was one part respite from the terror of the Sith Lord's home, and one part abject terror for the reality that his performance at the races was one that his life depended on.

Perhaps just another reason why the Pantoran took nothing for granted. Least of all his own life.

 

[Micah tol Powl]

THE PLANET
A S C E N S I O N
848 ABY | ONE YEAR EARLIER

It was strange being on a world filled with so much light. It glistened off the leaves -- green, verdant, fickle things -- peeking out from under the veil of snow which cushioned the hard, cold earth of the fjord coast. The wind rustled through the branches of the trees, coming in with the cold, tundra breeze. In the husk of a dead tree, the work of decomposition created a cycle of death that would become life.

The young Pantoran sat, cross-legged, on the frozen earth. He wore only a light, white tunic against the cold. The wind touched his face with flurries of snow, a pale kiss against resplendent azure flesh. Vibrant purple hair flitted in the breeze. How long had he been there? Not even he could have said. Seconds became minutes. Minutes became an hour. An hour, hours.

A plume of smoke appeared as he exhaled, his cold fingers reaching up to pull the deathstick away from his lips.

He was only ten years old.

Sad to say, the effects of the drug at least took some of the bite out of the cold. Staring out over a snow covered field toward a row of buildings that had been erected on the far side of a new industrial complex. As he looked out, there was something different about his eyes. They were not at all like those of a child. There was something eerily cold, unfeeling in them.As though the light of some consciousness was absent, leaving behind a void.

A colorful comlink band encircled his wrist. It beeped at him to signal that it was time.

Bending forward, the blue-skinned youth turned to crouch over the rifle he had left propped over the dead log. Resting the weight of the weapon on the log, the boy tucked the butt tight into his shoulder, his right hand naturally finding the pistol grip as his other hand adjusted the scope.

Through the lens, the boy peered inside of a corporate boardroom. A Rodian, fat with excess -- food, money, any number of sins -- was rising from out of his chair to speak. The Pantoran wasn't adept at lip reading. He didn't know what the Rodian was about to say. His master hadn't shared those details with him, and probably didn't care. That wasn't important.

Birds took off for the sanctuary of the open skies, fleeing from out of the trees as the sound of a blaster echoed across the fjord. The Pantoran grimaced slightly as the rifle recoiled into his chest. In an instant, the view through the scope changed from pristine windows aglow in the sunlight to mirrored shards of broken glass, splattered with blood.

Exhaling a sigh of relief, the boy stuck the remains of the deathstick back between his lips, before he began work breaking the rifle down.

A slow clap signaled the approval of his watcher. Jobs like this were deemed low enough priority that the boy could undertake them for his self-proclaimed master, but that wasn't the same as trusting him with them. No, there was always somewhere there to hold the leash, even if his master wasn't around.

It was just enough slack in the leash to make him wonder what real freedom felt like...