The Craci System also belongs to Lucasfilm, but the features and the culture are my own additions. The characters are mine, too, though admittedly they’re the direct result of the universe.

A big thank you goes out to Valeda Kor and Alamosaurus, the beta-readers for the previous version of this story. Also many thanks to GoldenArrow and Texas Fett, who have helped put more life into these characters and stories than they probably realize. Finally, Charley, Frances and Jeanne showed me how communities can react to hard times, and while I will not thank the hurricanes for this, I have to acknowledge that the lesson was valuable and helped add to this story.

Prologue

The scene was a common one on the world of Craci IV: it was a large pasture with gently rolling hills formed by glaciers long ago. The swaying grass was a blue-green color, and an occasional solitary tree dotted the landscape. Also found here was a domestic herd of Cracian thumpers, docile workbeasts that stood on two powerful hind legs and used their long tails for balance. Their forelegs were much smaller and were primarily used to dig up the plants they ate.

The fence enclosing the pasture was tall, a necessity in order to keep the thumpers inside. While it could keep the thumpers in, however, it couldn’t keep out one young girl who had her big brother’s assistance.

Seventeen-year-old Darin Stanic leaned casually on the fence after lifting his younger sister, Shiori, up on top of it. Sitting atop the fence, the ten-year-old was able to pet the nose of a grey thumper on the other side. Shiori often insisted on stopping here to see the animals when she and Darin were running errands that took them to this side of town. Darin had long since come to expect it and simply figured it into their travel time when possible. He knew Shiori loved this, so he didn’t mind the brief layover.

Today was no exception–Shiori was obviously enjoying petting the thumper and talking to it. Darin smiled as he watched. That simple scene was just one of the many reminders of how content he was with his life: it was quiet, ordinary, and that suited him just fine. Nothing here ever seemed to change, and in all honesty, he really didn’t want it to.

There had been thumpers in this pasture for as long as Darin could remember. The animals had been a cornerstone of the Cracian economy and culture since the planet was first settled and the thumpers were domesticated. Maybe that was the reason the thumpers’ characteristics seemed to match the stereotypical characteristics of the planet’s sentient populace as well: they were quiet, hard workers who rarely raised a fuss as long as they were treated fairly. It had always been that way.

While the outside world seemed timeless, however, there were some aspects of Darin’s personal life that seemed determined to press forward, no matter how much he didn’t want them to do so. For example, his sister was growing up much faster than Darin would have liked. One result of this was that it was getting harder for him to lift Shiori up so she could sit on the fence, and Darin mildly said to her, "We can’t keep doing this forever, Squirt. You’re getting too big, and pretty soon I won’t be able to lift you up there anymore."

"Don’t call me Squirt," was the first offhand, nearly automatic response from her. Then she continued, "But Darin, we have to. It’s too hard for me to climb up, and this is the only way I can reach. I have to say hi to Smokey."

"Smokey?" Darin looked at the thumper she was petting. "How do you know that’s his name? Did you talk to the owner?"

Shiori shook her head, causing her long black curls to bounce. "That’s the name I gave him. That’s what I’m going to call him when we buy him, too."

Darin couldn’t help but grin a bit. Like most of her friends, Shiori had wanted a thumper for years, pretty much since she was old enough to say so. "There’s lots of thumpers in this pasture. Why do you want this one, and not one of the others?"

"Because he likes me. I say hi to him every time we come past. See, the others don’t even come over here, but when Smokey sees me, he comes. He’s so friendly that I bet I could ride him with no problem. Right, Smokey?"

Shiori began to gently scratch Smokey behind his long ears. The thumper stepped closer to the fence and cocked his head to allow Shiori to pet him better. His eyes were half-closed and his long, slender tail twitched, sure signs that he was enjoying the attention. Shiori laughed and briskly rubbed his shaggy mane, then ran her fingers along his neck, burying them in his thick winter coat that was beginning to shed out. Finally, she stroked the front of his long face, ending by tickling his muzzle.

Not really an animal person himself, Darin waited patiently while she did this until a glance at his chrono told him it was time to get home. "Sorry, but we have to get going now. Mom’s going to be wondering where her groceries are."

Shiori sighed. "Okay." She gave Smokey a final scratch under his chin and said, "I’ll bring you a treat next time, okay? Bye, Smokey." Then she looked at Darin and said, "Lift me down."

Darin eased her off the fence and set her on her feet. Their family’s landspeeder was parked a few steps away on the side of the road, and after the siblings climbed in and Darin started it up, he paused, gave a quiet sigh and looked at his sister. He hated to remind her of this, but he couldn’t stand to see her hurt, and she would be if this notion stuck itself too firmly in her head. "Listen," he said gently, "it’s fine for us to stop by and say hi to Smokey, but don’t get too attached to him. Dad and Mom can’t afford to buy a thumper." He started the landspeeder down the road toward home.

"Why not?" Shiori asked. "They bought you flying lessons."

"That’s not quite the same as buying a thumper. Besides, now that lessons are over and I have my license, I have to use my own money to go flying."

"Well, if they can’t buy him for me, then I’ll buy him when I’m grown up and have my own money. I’ll build a barn for him in the backyard and go riding every day. Or maybe we can just use the shed. Dad can put his tools somewhere else."

Darin grinned and glanced at her before returning his attention to the road. "Just remember, no matter how grown up you get, you’ll always be my Little Squirt."

"Don’t call me Squirt."
 
 

Chapter One

The quiet of the night was broken only by the soft music coming from the stringed loka instrument and the rustle of the long grass in the wind. Every so often an electronic beep or two would sound, breaking the natural harmony.

Cohen Nuuren sat under the field’s lone srika tree and strummed along on his instrument, playing songs they all knew mixed in with some improvisations. Every so often he’d sing softly to himself. "If I start now, I’ll never stop..."

"Well, they say that prevention is nine-tenths the cure," muttered a companion seated on the ground beside him. He never looked up from fiddling with the inside circuits of his macrobinoculars.

Cohen glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "Haven’t you got that thing fixed yet, O Miracle Worker? I have work in the morning, you know."

"So do I. But hey, these things are delicate, and it’s not like I have a lot of light to go by here." Bosko Wanth motioned with his head toward the small battery lamp nestled in the middle of the trio, their inadequate defense against the night’s darkness. "How ‘bout you, Darin?" he asked the third member of the group, still without looking up. "You got work in the morning?"

"Yeah," came the murmured reply. Darin distractedly tore his gaze away from the book he was reading on a datapad. "I have to get in early. I’m supposed to take a few canisters of coolant and some landing strut shocks down to Envira first thing in the morning."

"How late are you working tomorrow?" Cohen asked, pausing his loka-playing. "Will you be back in time to watch the game?"

"Yeah, I should be," said Darin. It never took much for them to get on the topic of donri, their favorite sport. "Who’s playing?"

"The Doashims and the Gharzrs."

Darin scoffed dismissively. "The Doashims are having a horrible year. The Gharzrs will be all over them."

"Don’t be so sure. The Doashims always do pretty well against the Gharzrs. It’ll be closer than you think."

Bosko joined in. "Hopefully they won’t have the same game officials as the Lylek/Panthac game did." The Lyleks were the professional donri team in the nearby large city of Corvallis, the closest place to their hometown of Merrillan to have one. "Did you guys hear about that awful call they made with the score tied and only ten minutes left on the clock? Nothing against the Lyleks, of course, but there’s no way that hit by that Panthac player was worthy of a penalty."

"I saw the footage of that," Cohen said. "If I was a Panthac fan, I’d be really upset. The Lyleks got lucky."

"One of these days, we need to go to a Lylek game," Darin said. "It’s been a while since we did something like that."

"Sounds good to me," said Cohen. Bosko agreed.

They fell silent for a short time, and Cohen took the opportunity to play some more on his instrument. Bosko had continued tampering with the binoculars like there had been no interruption. After watching him work for a few moments, Darin said, "Looks like our nuinrum-watching outing tonight’s been shot down, huh?"

Cohen and Bosko both shrugged a reply.

A bit disappointed, Darin brushed his dusty-blond bangs away from his eyes and looked around. The early springtime night was beautiful and cool, though somewhat on the warm side by Cracian standards, and the wind was keeping the insects away. The clouds that almost always plagued Craci Four’s skies during the daytime were at night nowhere to be found, leaving the sky glittering with countless stars. It was as if the planet couldn’t make up its mind whether to keep its inhabitants safe at home or to let them venture outward. Not that that had stopped them, though; even now the starfield was disrupted often by the blinking lights of a passing ship.

Ships were a common sight here, though more often than not they were just stopping at this hub for resupplying or refueling while en route to the nearby stars of the Corporate Sector. Aside from that, the main reason people on this far side of the galaxy were even aware of Craci IV’s existence was the thumpers they raised and sold to other worlds.

On a higher level, the Craci System was noteworthy in that section of space for only one reason. The system’s location technically put it within the jurisdiction of the Corporate Sector Authority, but it was different from most other Corporate Sector worlds. Like everything else in that part of the galaxy, it all came down to money, and if there was enough money, almost anything was possible. Together, the governments of Craci III and Craci IV, the two inhabited planets of the system, had a contract with the CSA to allow them to govern themselves, and the system was close enough to the border and just barely unimportant enough to make the arrangement cost-effective to the CSA.

As a result, inhabitants of the Craci System enjoyed a lifestyle nearer that of the Core or Rim worlds instead of the business-based living conditions and oppressive worker status of other places in the Corporate Sector. It took a lot of credits for the governments to make the contract cost-effective to the CSA, though, and the consequent trade-off was an extremely high tax rate for all Cracians, which kept the cost of living high and prevented too many luxuries from finding their way onto the two worlds, but the majority of Cracians preferred this citizenship and "normal" lifestyle over the indentured servitude and personal limitations of other CSA worlds. This arrangement also meant that planetary money-managing and dealings with the CSA became very important, so the Cracians who ended up in power usually possessed the same ruthless business ethics as other prominent figures in the CSA. For the most part, though, the arrangement worked, and it allowed normal Cracian citizens to sit outside with their friends and look up at the night sky without having to answer to any of the stars above.

Darin turned his sights from those stars back to his friends. Bosko was still immersed in trying to fix the macrobinoculars, and he would continue with that same tenacity until he fixed them or until Cohen or Darin decided it was time to go and made him stop. Darin had always been impressed with his technical abilities, and he’d even helped Bosko get a job at the speeder repair shop where his dad worked. Darin knew his dad liked Bosko, and when his friends visited their house, Bosko and Darin’s dad would sometimes end up happily talking shop for hours, unaware that the level of technical detail in their conversation quickly surpassed Darin’s and Cohen’s knowledge and would end up driving those two away to other activities out of boredom or out of fear of losing their sanity.

Bosko was a scrawny guy with short, dark brown hair whose family had moved to Merrillan a few years ago. Since they’d met, Darin considered him a good friend, even though Bosko could sometimes be a little too opinionated for Darin’s taste.

Next to Bosko, Darin noticed that Cohen was also gazing up at the stars while absent-mindedly strumming his instrument. Probably wishing he was captaining a ship instead of stocking supplies at a warehouse, Darin thought. Not that I can blame him. But he’ll make it there one day. I’m sure of it.

Darin had been best friends with Cohen since they were about four years old, and Darin couldn’t remember a time when Cohen hadn’t wanted to be the captain of a starship. Darin certainly never discouraged the idea; maybe he was biased, but he honestly believed that someone better suited to be a captain couldn’t be found in this galaxy.

Cohen was the kind of person who seemed to have everything going for him. He’d been captain of their school’s donri team, he was a good pilot and a better student, and he had a brown-haired, brown-eyed appearance that, combined with his personality, could get him virtually any date he wanted. What amazed Darin, though, was that in spite of all this, Cohen acted like any other normal person. He didn’t let it all go to his head, and he still always chose to spend time with Darin, who saw himself as rather boring and sometimes inadequate in comparison. Darin looked up to Cohen and was grateful for his unconditional friendship.

So, Cohen was going to be a captain, and Bosko was already doing what he loved, which was fiddling with electronics and fixing whatever broken things he could get his hands on. In most ways, Darin was already doing what he wanted, too. He didn’t have the big dreams like Cohen and even Bosko did; he was content with a quiet lifestyle here at home, just as long as he was flying something, anything. He’d be happy continuing to do shipping runs for the rest of his life, hopefully moving up to doing intrasystem runs in a space transport instead of only intercity runs in a landspeeder. Still, he had fun talking with his two good friends about exciting plans for the future, plans fueled by youthful ideals that made anything seem possible, even for three seventeen-year-olds less than a year out of school. It would be interesting to see where they all ended up five, ten, even fifteen years from now.

For right now, though, he had to keep in mind that he had work in the morning–all of them did. Darin reluctantly stood up, stretched, put his datapad in one of his many pockets and fastened his vest over his longsleeved shirt. The clothing style was typical for that region, being optimized for working in the cold climate. "Okay, guys, I’m heading back. It’s almost midnight."

Cohen nodded and followed suit, with Bosko raising his eyebrows at them and then shrugging before stowing his tools in his small repair kit.

"Yeah, Boz, we’ll try it again tomorrow night, okay? I’ll borrow my dad’s binocs," Cohen offered as he fastened his own vest.

"If it doesn’t rain tomorrow," Bosko replied. "I heard it might." He looked up at the sky to make a general forecast, but only stars were visible. And then...something more. He squinted. "Hey, what is that?"

The other two followed his gaze, and after a few moments they saw it too. Scattered across the sky were pinpricks of light bursting out and quickly dying into nothingness. Darin wished Bosko had been able to fix the macrobinoculars so they could get a better look.

The three of them watched the sky for a minute more, and then Cohen looked down. "Okay, I’m going home now," he said as he began to slowly walk away. "I don’t know what’s causing that, but it’s giving me the creeps."

Darin and Bosko nodded in agreement and fell into step alongside him.

The next morning, Darin sat at the kitchen table gulping down his breakfast. Shiori came skipping in, still wearing her nightgown. Her black curls were bouncing on her shoulders and made her look even more energetic.

"Hey, Squirt," Darin greeted her.

"Don’t call me Squirt," she said. She went to a cabinet and began looking through it. "Mom! Where’s the bread?"

Their mother, Ginala Stanic, came into the room. "Don’t shout. I can hear you." Seeing Ginala and Shiori together, there was no doubt that they were related–both had the same green eyes, slim build, and long, black, naturally curly hair.

Ginala took the bread off the top of the freezer box where Darin had haphazardly thrown it, and she gave it to her daughter before turning to Darin. She took a second to watch her son, and then she shook her head, which caused her curls to bounce just like Shiori’s had. "Darin, I swear you’re going to choke. Now slow down and eat calmly for once."

"Can’t, Mom," he replied between mouthfuls. "Heading down to Envira this morning, and I have to get to work early. Can you give me a ride?"

"Not if you keep eating like that, I won’t."

Darin comically rolled his eyes and began eating with an exaggerated slowness, and it made his mother laugh. "Fine, fine, I’ll take you. It’ll just be a few minutes before I’m ready to go, okay? I have some errands to run in town before I go in for the lunch shift today, and your dad is going to take Shiori to school on his way to work."

Darin nodded, and Ginala left to get ready. As she walked out of the kitchen, she passed her husband who was coming into the kitchen as if on cue. "Morning, everyone," Darin’s father said with a grin. Jodeco Stanic was average height and stocky with blond hair, blue eyes, and a gruff laugh that was never too far away.

While mother and daughter had a strong resemblance to each other, though, the same was not necessarily true for father and son. Darin was the mutt of his family, having inherited his genes seemingly at random. He had his mother’s green eyes, a funny little half-smile from his father, and his father’s short, straight blond hair that was made a little darker by his mom’s black hair and his time spent outdoors. Even Darin’s height and build were influenced by both parents and fell partway between the two.

Jodeco tousled his children’s hair as he walked by each of them on his way to the cabinet. "Hey, where’s the bread today?"

"Here, Daddy," Shiori answered. She gave him the bread and a hug, and when she turned to head back to the table her father looped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her back to him. She squealed in surprise and then started giggling while she leaned against him, held there by his embrace.

"How’s my Little Squirt this morning?" Jodeco asked. He winked at Darin.

"No, Daddy, not you too!" Shiori protested. She might have sounded indignant if she hadn’t still been laughing a bit.

Shiori affectionately wrapped her arms around the one arm of Jodeco’s that was still holding her. Once she did that, Jodeco could only use his other hand to take out a piece of bread and put fruit spread on it, but his time as a repair mechanic had taught him how to use each of his hands independently to their full potential. While he readied his breakfast, he asked Shiori, "Do you have all your things for school together?"

"Yeah, they’re packed."

"That’s my girl." He finished with the slice of bread and brought it over to the table, gently pulling Shiori along with him. After he sat down to eat, Shiori climbed onto his lap.

She reached across the table to where she had been sitting and tried to grab her toast, but Darin reached over first and slid her plate back a few centimeters out of her reach. Shiori scowled a bit and tried again, but Darin grinned mischievously and did the same thing, prompting an annoyed cry of "Darin!" She tried once more, and this time Darin let her grab it.

"Now, Darin," Jodeco chided, "don’t be teasing your sister at the breakfast table." He paused for a beat before adding, "That’s what lunchtime is for."

"Daddy!" This time Shiori’s voice did sound indignant.

"Sorry, Dad," Darin said as he finished eating, "but I won’t be back for lunch."

"Oh. My mistake, then."

"Good thing Mom didn’t hear you say that," Darin said with a grin. Then he remembered a question he had and said, "Oh, I wanted to ask you something. Have you heard anything about those weird lights last night?"

Jodeco gave him a puzzled look. "Weird lights? I don’t think so. What did they look like?"

"They were all over the sky," Darin responded. "Just a small burst of light and then it was gone, like a firebug exploding, but far away. We watched it for a minute before we left. I never saw anything like it before."

His father shook his head. "Can’t say I have either. I’ll keep my ears peeled for news, though. Probably just meteors or space trash burning up."

"Did you make a wish?" Shiori asked.

Darin raised an eyebrow at her. "What?"

"When a firebug explodes, you make a wish and it’ll come true. Did you do that last night?"

Shaking his head, Darin replied, "Sorry. I’ll remember to if I see it again, though, okay?"

Shiori looked a little disappointed that her big brother had missed a perfectly good wish opportunity, but before she could chastise him for it, Jodeco spoke up again.

"Where you off to today?" he asked Darin.

"Envira’s my first stop. I should be back from there in a few hours, and then whatever else is on the schedule."

"Sounds good."

"Oh, yeah, when you see Bosko at work, can you tell him that tonight’s weather looks fine?"

"Will do."

Ginala came back into the kitchen and said to Darin, "I’m ready. Let’s go."

"Okay." Darin put his dishes on the counter with a mental note to put them through the washer that night.

Ginala quickly kissed her husband and daughter on her way past them. "Bye, Jo’co. Bye, sweetheart."

Darin grabbed his gear from next to the door and briefly turned to his father and sister. "Bye, Dad. Bye, Squirt."

"See you later, you two," his father said as he waved.

Darin and his mom left. When the door closed behind them, it cut off the last half of the long-suffering reply, "Don’t call m–"

After the cold winter, the early springtime warmth of the late morning felt good, prompting Darin to open the side windows of the landspeeder on his way back from Envira. As he approached the edge of Merrillan and began to slow down to enter the town, the wind rushing in through the windows carried faint wails from sirens. He frowned at the rare sound, more puzzled than anything, and hurried back to his workplace.

Merrillan’s city-wide emergency sirens were full in Darin’s ears as he parked the speeder in the hangar at Merrillan Transport and Shipping, or MTS as everyone called it for short. Anxious and confused about what was happening, he jumped out and jogged through the back door to the main building. The normally-bustling loading docks and management offices were strangely deserted, but after a minute of searching he found out why–all of his coworkers were quietly standing in the front lobby watching Craci IV’s holonet. The anxious knot in his chest tightened as he realized something serious would have to be happening for everyone to have stopped working to watch. A few coworkers in the back who noticed Darin’s entrance didn’t say anything to him and simply made room for him to see the holoemitter.

Craci IV’s leader, looking very worn-out, stood in the center of the holo with what looked to be an Imperial stormtrooper standing discreetly off to the side. That in and of itself was strange and noteworthy: while the Empire had advisors to the CSA as part of an agreement, there were no Imperial troops for light-years in any direction. At least, there hadn’t been.

The Cracian leader had just finished whatever he was saying, and the holo switched to the image of a Gran, the Cracian holonet’s chief news anchor. His three eyes were staring hard at the holorecorder as he began speaking in the elegant voice of his species. "There, once again, is the Council Leader’s official statement."

The alarm sirens outside abruptly cut off. Everyone in the room looked around uneasily, then returned their attention to the holonet.

"To recap, upon the complete destruction of our planetary defense satellites last night by ‘raiders,’" the Gran’s last word dripped with sarcasm, and Darin felt a cold shiver as he realized what those pinpricks of light in the sky had been, "the Empire has stepped in and offered us their ‘protection.’" Another sarcastic word, and Darin wondered at the transformation of this normally extremely objective reporter. "Preliminary reports from Craci Three say that their defense satellites have also been destroyed, and the Empire has offered assistance to them as well.

"About fifteen minutes ago, the Imperial representative requested that he temporarily be given emergency authoritative power in Craci Four’s military and commercial branches in order to facilitate an expedient replacement of the planetary defense satellites."

People in the room started muttering and shaking their heads. Some who had seen an earlier version of the news bulletin went off to the side and talked quietly. Others, like Darin, stood transfixed as something so seemingly unreal came crashing through the holonet and into their lives. It was frightening to think about how vulnerable the planet’s cities were without the defense satellites protecting them.

Darin still hadn’t fully comprehended what was happening or what it all meant when without warning, the sirens outside started blaring again. Everyone jumped, then made their way to the front window at the sound of approaching repulsorlifts.

Darin went to the window with the others and stood on his tiptoes to try to see over everyone’s heads to street level. He quickly rocked back on his heels, however, when out of the top of the window he saw a couple of transports fly low overhead and land out of sight behind some buildings a few blocks down. Darin recognized them as some sort of Imperial troop transport, and he broke out in a cold sweat. The sirens, the news broadcast, and now the appearance of Imperial troops all thrown at him at once honestly scared him, and the safest place he knew was his home with his family. Maybe they’d all left work and school to go home too.

As he backed up suddenly to go toward the front door, his supervisor took him by the arm. "Darin, are you okay?" Tilde D’frent asked.

Darin stared wide-eyed out the window to where the ships had landed while he distractedly answered her. "I’ve gotta get home–"

"Hold on now. I don’t think it’s exactly safe out there at this moment. You’re lucky you got back when you did. Just give it some time to blow over." A few locks of light brown hair fell haphazardly across her face, and while normally she just automatically brushed them aside, she was concentrating too much on Darin now to pay them any heed.

Darin finally turned his full attention to her and protested, "But I can’t just sit around here and wait. Those were Imperial troop transports. If something happens–"

"If something happens, you’re safer right here. You live almost on the other side of town. I don’t want you leaving and then getting caught outside somewhere if there are going to be troops in the streets." Her voice was firm; the tall woman had raised two kids of her own, and she knew how to make her intentions clear with no room for negotiation. Then Tilde paused, and her tone was more understanding when she continued, "I’m sure your family will be staying inside and staying put where they are, too. Things will be fine. Okay?"

Darin worriedly looked outside again. Staying there at MTS would mean being isolated from the place where he most wanted to be and the people he most wanted to be with. He shook his head. "I want to go."

Tilde steered him over to the side of the room, away from most of the other workers. "Listen," she said quietly, "just stay here for now. We don’t even know what’s going on out there. It may turn out to be nothing. Everything–"

She stopped in midsentence when more repulsorlifts were heard outside. This time they were treated with the sight of the town guard, dressed for a confrontation, going down the street in speeders toward the Imperials’ landing area. Some of the guard rode Cracian thumpers more slowly behind and were calling out to the buildings and the people standing in the streets, "Stay inside! Go inside! Take shelter!" They had to shoo away gawkers as well as stop speeder traffic and force those people into the nearest buildings, but once the street was clear the guards continued on.

The holonet news broadcast suddenly fizzled and cut out.

A few minutes later, the first sounds of blaster fire came.

The next half hour or so was a living nightmare. From both nearby and far away, sounds of blasters filled the air, and these were punctuated often by yelling and occasionally by shrieks from shoulder-launched missiles. Sometimes an explosion nearby would sound, rattling the windows and shaking the building. One time a blast came close enough to shatter the large front window, sending glass fragments flying everywhere. Darin and his coworkers had long since taken what cover they could find in the office and the rest of the building, as far away from the windows as they could. Dull footfalls and the hum of repulsorlift engines came and went outside in the street. Then abruptly, without warning, everything was silent.

The workers wordlessly looked at each other, waiting to see if the battle would start up again, but for a long, agonizing time, nothing happened. It was Tilde who finally broke the silence with a soft, carefully controlled voice. "Stay back. I’ll look outside."

One by one the workers nodded, their expressions shaken and pale. Tilde reached the side of the window and cautiously looked around. "I don’t see anyone."

Without comment, Darin and some other workers carefully stepped to the window to join her, crunching on the broken glass and keeping to the wall lest the shooting begin again. Blaster bolts had drawn scorched lines on buildings along the street, and any vehicles that were unfortunate enough to have been parked out front were damaged and covered with dust and debris. Some buildings were leveled. A handful of stormtrooper bodies and a couple of town guard bodies were lying in the street within sight.

"Now what do we do?" Darin managed, staring morbidly at the first dead people he’d seen outside of a funeral.

Tilde shook her head slightly while continuing to look outside. "We wait for a while, I suppose. I sure don’t want to go out there now."

A few others murmured agreement, and some of the group tore away from the window and stood listlessly in adjoining rooms, jumping at the smallest innocent noise. Emergency rescue vehicles began coming down the roads. Darin stayed at the window looking out and saw a handful of others in the surrounding buildings doing the same.

After a few minutes a somewhat bloody member of the town guard drove slowly by in a speeder, amplifier in hand. "People of Merrillan, stay inside where you are until instructed otherwise by a guardsman." He drove on, repeating the message. Darin stared at him; he sounded exhausted and frustrated, almost bitter.

At that moment, Darin wanted nothing more than to go home to his family, yet he stayed where he was and simply looked out at the street again, the street he took every day here to work but which was now littered with bleeding bodies and building debris. In spite of himself, he felt his eyes clouding up with confused and very frightened tears. What just happened here? he asked himself.

By the time a guardsman finally knocked on their door, everyone was tense and fidgeting, which was helped in no small part by the comm lines not functioning; whether the frequencies were saturated or there was some equipment damage somewhere causing it, no one knew. The guard came in, escorted by two stormtroopers. His dark-green-and-black uniform was dirty and soaked with sweat, and his sidearm holster was conspicuously empty.

"Everyone in here, please," the blond-haired guard called to the people in the other rooms. It was obvious that some people were afraid of the stormtroopers, and it took a few minutes for them to be coaxed out. Once everyone was assembled, he began the process that seemed to be getting routine to him. "I’m Guardsman First Class Sorila. Your cooperation will be greatly appreciated and will allow this to run quickly and smoothly. I need you all to line up and give me your ID. Once we have you all entered in, we will transport you to your homes. Everyone in the town is under immediate curfew until further notice." He took out a datapad as the stormtroopers looked on in silence. "First person, please."

Tilde stepped up, fishing out her ID but not yet giving it to him. "What happened out there? What’s going on?"

The guard had apparently gotten those same questions from every other person he’d seen lately. "Did you see the holonet this morning, ma’am?"

"Yes, but that doesn’t explain what happened here just a few hours ago. What was that?"

The guardsman glanced angrily out of the corner of his eye at the stormtroopers, who merely got a better grip on their blaster rifles. "A mistake," he bit out. Then, forcing more calmness into his voice, he said, "Now, your ID, please?"

Tilde stared at the stormtroopers for a second, obviously considering pressing the guard further; she thought better of it, however, and reluctantly handed him her ID card. After the last person had been ID’ed, the guardsman split them up into groups based on their home’s locale. Once he was done, everyone from MTS and a few leftover people from neighboring businesses were piled into several large landspeeders for the bus ride back to their homes.

The speeder slowed down to a drop-off point about two blocks from Darin’s house. Darin jumped out of the speeder almost before it had stopped and ran the rest of the way home. With relief, he noted that the house was not damaged. Many of the others he had seen on the way had been, and some had even been completely destroyed. He decided he didn’t even want to know what the death toll was.

He reached the small brown house, called out, "Mom! Dad! Shiori!" and was through the door without slowing down.

A relieved cry of his name answered him, and Darin instantly felt better. Once inside, he saw his mother disentangling herself from Shiori’s grasp. "Thank goodness you’re okay!" Ginala exclaimed. "I haven’t been able to reach anyone through the comms." She came to him and wrapped him in a hug, but not before Darin saw both of their tear-stained faces.

Darin and his mother held each other for a moment before Darin asked, "Where’s Dad?"

He felt her stiffen under his embrace, and a sinking feeling appeared abruptly in his stomach, one that suggested they hadn’t been crying solely from the exhaustion and fear the day had caused. He desperately denied it and waited to hear his mother do the same by saying his father was safe. He had to be. After all, tragedies were something that only happened to other people.

When she didn’t immediately dispel his fears, Darin felt panic beginning to bubble up inside. "Mom? Have you heard from Dad? Is he okay?"

Ginala sniffled and pulled back from Darin a bit, holding him at arm’s length. Fighting back tears that threatened to start anew, she visibly tried to compose herself. Green eyes locked with green eyes as she said shakily, "Your–your dad was at work when the attack started." Her voice became quieter. "Somehow a–a stray blaster bolt, or–or something, hit a large container of speeder fuel next to the repair shop. I guess they were in the middle of a job when they were ordered inside. It exploded, destroying most of the building." She paused and took a shaky, strangled breath, and Darin tried to brace himself, knowing what was coming next but still praying he was wrong. "Everyone inside was killed."

The shock still hit him. He tried to pull away from her, but she held onto his arms and kept him there. Ginala began silently crying again and continued, delivering the other blow, "–Both your father and Bosko."

This time Darin did stumble away from her, and he just stared at her numbly. In the sudden worries about his father, he’d completely forgotten that Bosko had worked there too. Now, in one heartbeat, he’d lost them both.

The reality hit him with the gentle touch of a sledgehammer. Time slowed to a halt then sped into a whirlwind then slipped through his fingers, and the outside world closed down for a time. The next thing Darin knew, his mother had pulled him into a hug again and a newly-sobbing Shiori was clinging to him for dear life. Slowly, as if someone else was controlling him, Darin put one arm around his mom and one around his sister and gradually returned the embrace until his mind started to reluctantly come back to the present, using that physical contact as an anchorpoint. He just focused on the touch of that hug and the relative security it provided and nothing else as he waited for the world to settle in place around him again.

All at once, the future seemed a scary, desolate place, and all they could do was wait in anxiety for what it held.

At 0200 hours that night, Darin and Cohen sat in Darin’s darkened room watching the holonet. Cohen had secretly shown up at Darin’s house at about half past midnight. Although Darin was afraid of what would happen if Cohen was caught violating the curfew, his immediate need for Cohen’s unique brand of support overrode his fear, and Cohen had confidently assured him that no one would catch him. Most of the comm lines had been restored, and Cohen had just heard about Bosko and Darin’s father. The two best friends supported each other in the aftermath, even getting up the courage to relate some happy memories and tell a couple funny stories about Bosko or Darin’s dad. After a while, they had simply run out of words to say and had turned on the holonet to try to learn what was happening. The holonet was back up, though prone to static and temporary outages.

A human reporter, whom Darin and Cohen recognized as one of the holonet’s junior anchors, had taken the Gran’s place as main anchor. The young man looked like he wasn’t sure if he was more nervous about the Imperials’ arrival or about it being his first time as lead anchor. The current broadcast had been recorded earlier that night and was being repeated with no interruptions, and the light from the holo illuminated the two friends’ faces with a flickering soft glow.

"Negotiations continue with the Imperial representatives for terms of aid with planetary defense," the anchor was saying. "At the moment, the Imperials have instituted defense teams at all the major cities on Craci Four, as well as many of the larger cities, for protection in lieu of the defense satellites. Reports indicate the same has been done on Craci Three.

"In breaking news from the greater Corvallis area, Captain Jolik seRaj, commander of the Merrillan Guard, has been arrested and will face a hearing. The Merrillan Guard allegedly openly attacked the arriving Imperial defense team this afternoon, mistakenly believing it was a hostile force. Their attack continued until ordered by the Council Heads to stand down. Similar incidents were reported in a few other cities, including Tannak, Crevilya, and Youni. The death toll in Merrillan is now estimated at two hundred and seventy, with a higher count expected once all reports are in."

Darin rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. "Captain seRaj has never liked the Empire. I wonder if he actually made a mistake, or if he knew full well what he was doing."

"I don’t know," Cohen responded quietly. "I sure wish I knew what was really happening, though. I wonder how much of this report is Empire-tinted. I’ve heard they do that." He tiredly brushed back his brown hair as he turned his gaze to the window, through which twinkling stars were visible in the clear night sky. Sure enough, it hadn’t rained.
 
 

Chapter Two

The small practice field hosted a flurry of activity. Most of the donri players had paired up and were playing catch with each other to warm up before their game. Darin and Cohen blended in with the rest of their teammates, all of them wearing maroon jerseys and black pants with dark green trim. Across the front and back of each jersey, their team name of "Smugglers" was emblazoned in dark green text above the player’s number. The opposing team, the yellow-and-blue-clad Riptides, was practicing beside them.

It had only been a week since the occupation started and mere days since the funerals for his dad and Bosko, and Darin hadn’t wanted to come to his donri league’s weekly game. As much as he loved playing, he’d been too depressed to really bring himself to care about it at that point. Finally his mother and Cohen had convinced him to go in order to get his mind off of everything.

While he warmed up with Cohen, Darin felt that had probably been the right decision. Playing the familiar game made the world feel a little bit more normal, and even the warm-up was helping him momentarily forget his misery, except for brief flashes when he’d catch himself wishing his dad would be there to see him play like he often had been. Other times he’d remember playing donri with Bosko and Cohen on their team back in school, and it hurt to realize that would never happen again.

When those thoughts started surfacing, Darin would bite his bottom lip and throw the ball a little harder to release some of the pressure inside him. He relished the satisfying thunk the ball made when Cohen caught it in his scoop, and the harder the throw, the louder the sound.

Donri itself was a rough sport. It was a three-on-three game of jostling, bumping, and tackling in pursuit of the ball, and one that required its players to wear helmets, arm guards, shin guards, and elbow and knee pads for their own protection. The rugged nature of the game seemed to go against Darin’s more laid-back personality, but he sometimes used the sport as an outlet for any pent-up frustrations. More than that, even, he enjoyed the teamwork and strategy that each match demanded. It was Craci IV’s most popular sport as well, always providing a good topic for conversation between friends or strangers, and was the source of some Cracian lingo.

Darin also liked the underlying simplicity of the game. Sure, it had its share of rules to learn, but the basic premise was easy to understand: throw the ball in the goal for a point, and the most points won. Each player had a curved "scoop" strapped to the underside of his or her lower arm, and the ball could be caught in, carried in, and thrown from the scoop. The player’s other hand, his throwing hand, had a glove with some padding on the palm, since the player could catch or throw the ball with this hand as well.

At each end of the field, there was a goalboard with a hole in the center. If the player threw the ball from his hand through the hole in his team’s goal, the goal was worth one point. If the player threw the ball from his scoop and managed to get it through, which was considerably more difficult, the goal was worth three points. To make things even harder, the area on the goalboard immediately around the hole was intentionally misshapen, so missed scoring attempts could rebound in almost any direction and were always unpredictable. As an example of the sport’s influence on the culture’s slang, Cracians would refer to something they didn’t expect as an "offside rebound," the term for one of those unpredictable bounces off the goalboard.

To call the Imperial occupation an "offside rebound" would have been an understatement, however, and most of the Merrillans Darin had talked to seemed to consider it more of a blind hit from behind with many of the same results, except for the penalty against the aggressor. The shock of the new lifestyle was evident even there at the sports complex: the atmosphere of the place that afternoon was a somber, subdued one in the wake of recent events. Games had been postponed due to the occupation, and this was the first day they had started up again. Before the first game there had been a tribute to the victims of the battle in Merrillan and the other places across Craci IV, and Darin had needed to momentarily retreat from everyone else during that time. The crowd at the main field watching the game in progress wasn’t cheering as loudly as normal, and the teammates warming up together before their own game weren’t joking around like usual. Several people besides Darin had known someone who had been injured or killed, so the thunk-punctuated conversations often steered around that topic.

Once Darin and Cohen were almost warmed up, they changed their throwing style. At first they had thrown with their hands and had caught with their scoops; now they threw with their scoops and caught with their hands. It took more concentration, and because of that it was several moments before Darin noticed the other pairs had stopped throwing and were watching something near the main field. The cheering from the stands had stopped.

Darin motioned for Cohen to stop throwing, and then he tried to find what everyone else was looking at. It didn’t take him long: parked beside the stands were some Imperial vehicles. Imperial soldiers were calmly disembarking and accompanying an officer toward the main playing field.

Darin jogged over to Cohen and asked, "What’s going on? Why are they here?"

Cohen looked just as confused as Darin felt. "I don’t know."

Both of them joined their teammates in heading over to where they could get a look at the main field. From there, they saw the game in progress had stopped and the Imperial officer had made his way to the announcer’s stand with an escort of a handful of soldiers. The other soldiers were positioning themselves around the field, facing the crowd in the stands and keeping an alert eye on them. The crowd, numbering one hundred people at most, had started murmuring and was growing restless at this unwelcome interruption, this "offside rebound."

The Imperial officer spoke authoritatively into the announcer’s microphone. "Attention. Everyone is ordered to immediately depart this complex in a peaceful fashion. This crowd is in excess of what is allowed by the temporary Imperial law. As we have announced multiple times, groups of more than ten people in one public place is prohibited."

The murmurings from the crowd grew more discontent, and the Imperial increased his volume to be heard over them. "This is for your own safety. Everyone is ordered to leave. There will be no more games and no more gatherings of this type until further notice."

"What?!" Cohen said in disbelief. "That is so unfair! We’re not hurting anything!"

Darin, the other players, and the crowd in the stands all shared Cohen’s opinion. The protests from the crowd got louder, but when the soldiers started preparing themselves to come into the stands and force the people out, some spectators apparently thought it wasn’t worth it to resist any longer and potentially be arrested or injured. Though they were obviously unhappy about it, they got up and left.

That caused more to follow, and then more, until the stands were mostly cleared out. A lot of the donri players began packing their gear and leaving as well, all while being rather vocal about their displeasure.

Darin stood there with Cohen, feeling bitter anger well up inside. Just when he’d begun to get his mind off of things and feel better, the Imperials had stepped in again and slapped him in the face. Darin chewed on his bottom lip for a moment and then spun to go get his bag for his gear. He bit out a repeat of Cohen’s earlier words. "So unfair."

"Yeah," Cohen muttered. "But it’s got to be only temporary, right? They can’t do this permanently."

Darin was too upset to answer, and he wordlessly packed his gear alongside Cohen.

A minute later, Ginala and Shiori came over, with Shiori essentially attached to her mother. They’d been in the stands waiting for the Smugglers’ game.

"I’m sorry, sweetie," Ginala said as she hugged Darin around the shoulders. "You okay?"

No, I’m not. I hate this, Darin thought. He held back his immediate verbal response, though, and glanced at Shiori. He’d been trying his best to not be too upset around her or vent when she was in earshot.

Cohen knew this because it meant Darin usually vented to him instead, and Cohen must have seen Darin’s look because he said, "Hey, Shiori, will you do me a favor?"

"What?" she asked. She wasn’t her usual enthusiastic self.

"My gear is too bulky for me to carry it all by myself," Cohen answered. "I’m going to take my bag to the speeder now. Will you come with and carry my helmet and scoop for me?"

It was a lie. Donri gear wasn’t overly bulky, and the players easily carried it around all the time. Shiori must have been too distracted with other thoughts to notice, though, since she didn’t call Cohen’s bluff; instead, she glanced back once toward the stands and didn’t let go of her mom.

Ginala caught on and coaxed, "Come on, Shiori. Cohen will be with you. I have to help Darin with his gear, and we’ll be right behind you."

"Please?" Cohen said.

Shiori let go of Ginala with obvious reluctance. Cohen smiled reassuringly at her and handed his scoop to her. He put his oversized helmet on her head as a finishing touch, slung his bag on his shoulder, and gently steered Shiori toward the Stanics’ landspeeder with him.

Darin offered Cohen a small smile as they left. Leave it to his best friend to know exactly what Darin was thinking and what he needed. Once they were out of earshot, Darin slung his own duffle bag on his shoulder. "Why are the Imperials doing this?" he demanded of his mother. "This is so unfair!"

"I know," she said sympathetically as they started to slowly follow Cohen and Shiori.

"They’re taking all the good things away, and for what?" In the span of just one week, his whole world had been turned upside down, and Darin was just about fed up. "First they close off the north beaches for security reasons, then they do this. There’s almost nothing left that’s just fun to do. Next they’ll be revoking pilot licenses and grounding everyone for ‘our own safety.’ Because, you know, it was so unsafe here when we were doing all these things before they came." Darin’s voice was turning sarcastic. "I’m so glad that the Imperials are here now to tell us how unsafe we were one or two weeks ago. Because, of course, all this unrest and everything they’re protecting us from couldn’t possibly have been caused by them."

Ginala just listened and let him blow off some steam. Darin was still angry when they reached the speeder, but he tried to cover it up. No need to upset Shiori.

It was two nights later when Darin slowly stepped into the kitchen’s doorway. His mother was working at the table, and she looked up when she heard him. "Is she asleep?" Ginala asked in a hushed tone.

Darin nodded. "It took a long time, though," he said just as quietly. "She’s still scared of going to sleep. I read two books to her before she was settled down enough to drift off."

Darin didn’t miss the distressed expression that flashed across his mother’s face. He could tell she was worried about Shiori, and so was he. All the days following his father’s death had been very hard on all of them: none of them had gotten much sleep, and they were all emotionally drained. Darin was having a very difficult time dealing with the loss of Bosko and especially his father, not to mention the occupation, and he knew his mother and sister felt the same way. Besides, now Darin didn’t even have donri, his favorite stress-release activity, and he could feel his nerves beginning to fray at times despite his attempts to not let everything get to him.

He quietly made his way over to the kitchen table where his mother sat with handfuls of datacards and a few datapads spread out before her. Sitting down next to her, he asked softly, "What are you doing? What did you need to talk to me about?"

In a weary voice, Ginala said, "I’ve been going over our finances now that your father–" She stopped.

Darin didn’t need her to finish the sentence, and he was glad that she didn’t. He glanced at a couple of the figures on the datapad she held, but his mother’s face and tone of voice told him a lot more. "It’s not good, is it?"

Her response was immediate. "We’ll be fine, Darin. Don’t worry. A few minor adjustments and–"

"Mom," Darin interrupted firmly, not believing her. "You don’t have to hide this stuff from me. I’m an adult, and this is my problem too. Tell me what’s wrong, and let me help fix it."

After a few seconds, Ginala sighed. "I’m sorry. You’re right. A mother’s instinctive reaction to shield her children from bad news is just a hard habit to overcome." She tried to smile.

Darin gave a small half-smile in return. "You can still keep Shiori from learning any bad news. Will that help?"

With a short chuckle, Ginala said, "Yes, it might." Then she grew somber again and absently stacked some haphazard datacards on the table. "Darin, listen. I’ll be painfully honest with you. With your father gone, our lives are changed forever, and we’ll have to adjust. Some of those adjustments will be very difficult, and we’ll have to make some sacrifices. All of this also means that I’ll be relying on you for a lot now."

"I understand, and I’ll do whatever you need me to. I’m not going anywhere."

She smiled again, though some sadness was evident. She just looked at him for a moment, and then she sighed once more, looked through the kitchen doorway down the hall to Shiori’s room and kept her voice quiet. "I guess we should make some plans."

Ginala put a datapad in front of Darin, and he quickly looked over the figures while she explained, "This is how things stand right now. As you suspected, they’re not good. Though your dad’s job would have never made us rich, it covered the brunt of the monthly and yearly expenses. I had to take a fair amount out of savings for the funeral costs, which puts us in an even worse predicament. Under normal circumstances, the life insurance fund your father had through the repair company would have paid for the funeral and also given us payments to help us through; however, that fund has been drained by the massive blow the company suffered during that fight. They lost a lot of workers that day and had a lot of damage. They promised to pay us back, but they have no idea when that’ll be.

"As if that’s not enough, the Imperials aren’t allowing the Cracian government to help with relief efforts since this town is something of a trouble spot that got a special designation in the Imperials’ book. From the rumors I’ve heard at work and around town, the Imperials don’t want our government to ‘reward’ us for being a trouble area. Some of the more cynical people are even saying the Imperials are doing this to force us to rely on their goodwill and become dependent on them. Regardless of why it’s happening, though, what it means is right now this town is financially on its own and so are we."

Darin nodded, trying to hide how overwhelmed he was already beginning to get. Annoyed with himself for that, he forced himself to concentrate and think things through, determined to come through for his mom in whatever she needed.

"Now," Ginala continued, "tomorrow I’ll be asking my boss if I can work full-time instead of part-time. Hopefully I can, the same way I did when we were paying your tuition for school. I’ll also be looking for a better-paying job, since I make next-to-nothing. Believe it or not, in this family you now make the most money per hour."

That surprised Darin at first, but once he thought about it, it made sense. He knew his mom’s waitressing job paid very little: it had been just enough to cover the rest of their expenses. Since Darin was also working part-time now instead of going to school, Ginala had been able to cut back on her hours to spend more time at home. Most of the family’s spending money came from a set portion of Darin’s income, and he was allowed to keep the rest of it to use for whatever he wanted, which was usually to go flying.

"Because of that, your job and your income are going to be very important, especially until I find a better one." Ginala pulled another datapad over and glanced at it before turning back to her son. "I’m going to be rather blunt now, Darin, and I’m sorry about that. I know everything is chaotic right now, but I need to hear any thoughts or impressions you have. At MTS, is business going to be hurt by the occupation, especially to the point where they may have to let some people go? Basically, how secure do you think your job is right now?"

Darin wondered if all people got this nervous when a heap of responsibility was suddenly thrown on them. He fought his anxiety back and told himself again that he would be there for his family and not let them down. He thought over the questions and then said, "Business has really dropped, but lately I haven’t been there much either with everything going on here at home. As slow as it’s been the last couple of days when I’ve been back, Tilde said it was picking up from earlier in the week, especially for shipping things like supplies and equipment for rebuilding and repairing the buildings around here. She’s cautiously optimistic that things will eventually get back to normal, and she’s usually pretty conservative when it comes to things like that. I think it’ll be fine in that sense. There might be some problems if we have to rework our shipping permits with the Imperials since they could decide to change them or deny them to us. Short of that happening and essentially putting us out of business, though, I think my job will be okay."

Some of his coworkers had told him about all the rumors surrounding the permits. One of those speculations had been that the Imperials would deny them the permits to force them to shut down, and then the Imperials would simply acquire the entire company themselves and transfer the employees to their own payroll. That way, they could control the company and not lose its infrastructure, which was already set up and smoothly doing business with others all over the planet. At the time, Darin had vowed that if that happened, he’d quit before he ever became an Imperial employee; however, with his family’s financial situation, maybe quitting just wasn’t an option anymore, no matter how much he would personally object to the principle of working for the Imperials after all they had done.

Darin paused, decided not to mention that rumor to his mother as long as it was just a rumor, and then added, "Tilde was talking about hiring a couple more people before all this came up. I’m sure she’ll let me go to full-time too."

Ginala nodded. "Good. That’s the next thing I was going to ask you, because we’re going to need it, all of it, to cover the expenses. Are you okay with working full-time?"

"Yeah, I am." Even as he said those words, Darin pictured everything that would mean giving up, and he felt depressed in spite of himself. He wouldn’t have nearly as much time to go flying if he worked more hours, though the money he earned to go flying would no longer be available for that activity anyway–it would all be going toward family expenses. It was the same situation with donri, but with his league suspended, it wouldn’t make a difference right now. And spending time with Cohen and Bos–Darin blinked, amending that to simply spending time with Cohen. Darin knew he would always make time to see Cohen, though, and Cohen would understand and try to accommodate that.

He tiredly rubbed his eyes while his mother’s earlier words about difficult adjustments and sacrifices ran through his head. He became irritated with himself for being selfish in a situation like this; he just had to accept the fact that his carefree life was over, and he sternly reminded himself that his family was much more important than his free time.

Darin thought of one more thing, though, and it caused his brow to furrow. "But wait. If we’re both working full-time, who’s going to watch Shiori?" Shiori’s school had been let out indefinitely until things in Merrillan quieted down. Before, Darin had figured that he and his mother would alternate part-time shifts to watch her, but they couldn’t do that if they were both working all day. "Will I have to work the night shift?"

"I hope not," Ginala said. "This might not work, but I’m hoping our employers will understand and let us have a little leniency due to everything going on. Another thing you need to ask Tilde when you ask about working more hours is whether or not you can bring Shiori with you to work every other day. I’ll be asking my boss the same thing. If they both allow it, we can alternate taking her with us during the day until her school starts back up. I know she’ll be good, and she won’t get in the way."

Darin turned that over in his mind as well but couldn’t see any potential reasons why Shiori couldn’t come with him on shipping runs. She’d probably like it, at least at first, and he agreed with his mother’s assessment that Shiori wouldn’t cause any problems. Plus, that would be a whole lot better than his working the night shift and staying home with her during the day while his mom worked. With the curfew in place, he wasn’t even sure how MTS was handling the night shift. "I’ll ask. I don’t think that’ll be a problem, either." He was thankful to have such a good boss.

Ginala swapped out datacards in the datapad she held. "If we can make all that work, we’ll be okay until I can find another job. Then maybe you’ll be able to go to fewer hours or have more of your income for yourself."

"It’s fine, Mom. Really." Darin looked over at the datapad she was reading. It was estimated projections for the full-time income of both his job and his mom’s current job, minus the monthly family expenses, and it did indeed show a small surplus. He suppressed a sigh, glad that everything would be covered but knowing things would be tight. Then he noticed another set of columns at the bottom of the readout. They looked identical to the projections at the top, except about one-fourth of his income was taken out and placed in another column. Without it, the small surplus was gone, and they were just barely breaking even. Confused, he asked, "What’s that bottom table for?"

"Oh, that." Ginala shifted her attention to the bottom figures. "It’s something I was considering. It’ll mainly depend on if I can find another job, and then only after we pay back our savings from what I needed to take out of it. I don’t want to count on insurance money that may not come for a while, so I’m not figuring that into any of this." She lightly tapped the display where it showed the part of Darin’s income that was set aside, and her voice was still quiet. "Once we’re back to where we were before, I was seeing if we could afford to buy a thumper for Shiori using this amount each month."

Darin honestly hadn’t expected that, and it seemed to contradict everything she’d said about making sacrifices. "What? Mom, you know thumpers aren’t cheap. We couldn’t even really afford one before. Why are you considering one now when things are even worse off?"

After a moment, his mother replied, "I know the numbers don’t look good right now, but this table is the worst-case scenario with my current job. That’s why I’m waiting on getting a new job first and building our savings back up. As long as we will then have enough of a buffer each month to cover a thumper’s basic feed and boarding bills, though, it’s something I’m going to consider. It’s not about the numbers then."

"Then what’s it about?"

"Your sister."

Darin paused, not quite understanding. "What? You lost me."

"You know how badly she wants a thumper. I think it would help her get through this if she had one."

Brought on by the stress and the grief of the past week, Darin’s knee-jerk reaction was something that felt like betrayal. Without thinking, he muttered, "So you want this thumper to be a replacement for Dad?"

His mother looked shocked. Darin was immediately sorry for saying that, though the sulky, angry feeling was still there.

"Nothing will replace your father, Darin," she snapped. Her voice wavered a little. "That’s not what this is about."

"You keep saying that, but I still don’t see what it is about," Darin said. "You said we’d have to sacrifice to get by, and I understand that. I’ll do that. But now you’re asking me to continue giving up all the things I want to do so we can get a thumper, of all things? Why? That doesn’t fall under the category of what I consider to be ‘getting by.’ Why not get a bigger house too while we’re at it?" Darin was even surprising himself with his attitude, but this seemed a little too unfair to him, and the week’s ordeal had made him moody.

"Listen to me," Ginala said sharply. "There’s more to this family than expenses and paying bills. It’s held together by more than staying out of debt. I know you know that, so just take two seconds to remember it.

"Yes, this plan would likely mean that you’d still have to work full-time so we’d have enough money to afford this. In case you’ve forgotten, there have been things your father and I wanted, but we sacrificed them for the two of you and for the good of the family as a whole, and that was when things were status quo. It’s even more important now. Now you have to step up and come through since he’s not here anymore, and you’ve got a little sister who could really benefit from your doing this for her."

Darin interrupted and protested, "But this still doesn’t make–"

"Let me finish. Maybe it’ll make sense then," Ginala said, still upset. "This is about trying to find something positive to take Shiori’s mind off of losing him. It’s about wanting to see her smile again and look forward to the next day instead of dreading bedtime and waking up crying each night. It’s about trying to make her happy in a place that lately has been determined to prevent that. It’s a sacrifice for her, not an attempt to forget about your father." She stopped and took a few breaths to bring her shaky voice under control. Slightly calmer, she asked, "Do you understand now?"

It was rare for Darin to mouth off to either of his parents, and it was just as rare for his parents to be angry with him; if nothing else, his mom’s sharp voice shocked him into listening and taking a couple of minutes to calm down.

Once he had and was able to look at his mother’s plan from her perspective, it seemed like it could be a good thing. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe it did make some sense. Maybe he’d jumped to conclusions too fast. If those cases were true, he felt bad for how he’d reacted. He should be helping his mom, not fighting with her and second-guessing her decisions and motives.

That additional amount of stress and the thought that he’d let his mom down when she needed his support made Darin’s mood swing begin to reverse. What was he thinking? He cared about Shiori a great deal, and who was he to be so selfish when he had a chance to help her? And how could he have ever in a million years thought his mother didn’t care about his father anymore? Yeah, you’re really coming through for everyone, aren’t you? Darin mentally scolded himself. You’re really helping and making things so much better. Dad would be so proud of you.

That last thought hurt more than he expected. The feeling of betrayal came back, only this time it felt like Darin had been the one being disloyal to the family with his words and actions. He absolutely hated that feeling. He looked down, feeling even worse now. "Sorry," Darin mumbled guiltily. "I didn’t mean it."

Ginala, also calm by this time, sighed and quickly wiped her eyes. Standing, she said gently, "I know, sweetie. Come here."

When Darin stood, she wrapped him in a hug. "I miss him too," she whispered. "I miss him too."

Darin clung to her and bit his bottom lip fiercely, struggling to keep his emotions in check and be strong for his mother. Feeling the sharp grief inside him again, he understood now why his mom wanted so badly to spare Shiori from this prolonged pain. If anything would help do that, it would be getting her a thumper, something she could take care of and have fun with. Something–how had his mom put it?–positive. When the time came, it would most likely mean he’d need to continue working full-time and giving up all of his earnings, but he’d do it for Shiori and his mom. He couldn’t stand to see Shiori hurt, and he wanted to spare her from this pain too.

His mother was right: life without their father was going to be difficult, the change would be painful, and sacrifices would have to be made for the good of them all. Darin swallowed past the lump in his throat caused by an ache of loneliness for his father, and he said quietly, "When it gets to that point, I know exactly which thumper she wants."

Ginala laughed just a little, then she sniffled and kissed Darin on the forehead. "We’ll make it through. Somehow. Together."

Darin nodded, and they released each other. Ginala wiped her eyes again and ended up looking over at the dirty dishes on the counter. Except for the couple of small bowls they’d prepared Shiori’s meals in that day, there were no new additions since the previous day.

Turning back to Darin, Ginala asked, "When’s the last time you ate?"

"When’s the last time you ate?" Darin countered.

"I asked you first."

Darin shrugged. "I haven’t been hungry."

"You still need to eat," Ginala scolded gently.

"So do you."

Ginala went to the cabinets and started looking through them. "I’ll fix you something."

"But Mom, it’s getting late–"

They both stopped and looked down the hallway when they heard Shiori start crying and calling for them. Darin sighed sympathetically. Another bad dream.

He turned to Ginala and said, "I’ll go sit with her."

His mother nodded somberly. "I’ll bring you something to eat."

"Only if you make enough for yourself, too."

She smiled a bit in resignation. "All right." Then she added in a teasing mutter, "Stubborn."

"I get that from you." Darin half-smiled at her before turning and walking down the hallway to his sister’s room. On the way, his half-smile disappeared, and he rubbed his face wearily. It was going to be another long night.

A week later, the curfew and restrictions had been relaxed somewhat on a probationary basis, and tension filled the streets to an extent that Darin couldn’t ever remember feeling in this town before. Brief protests, ineffective except to create more tension, had been occurring every once in a while recently as the Imperials seemed to take matters more and more into their own hands by brute physical and political force. His hometown of Merrillan had always been fairly easy-going, and sometimes now as he went down the streets he wondered if he hadn’t really woken up that morning in a rancor’s nest. All around, it was very much an "us versus them" attitude: Merrillans and a few other large groups around Craci IV were standing together against the Imperials, but somehow the Imperials always seemed to win. This was causing some of the more influential Cracians to begin wavering in their steadfastness, now wondering which side it was best to be on, which only increased the friction.

Ginala and Shiori dropped Darin off at his work one bright morning. Darin kissed his mother and hugged his sister before getting out of their speeder, and once they left for his mom’s work, Darin turned and walked into his own. The large front window was still boarded up, giving the place a condemned look. To remedy that, one of the employees had painted on the boards, "MTS is open."

Ginala and Darin were both working full-time now. Each of their supervisors had given their permission for Shiori to accompany Ginala and Darin to work, and the alternating had been going fairly well so far. Darin and Shiori had actually had a decent day yesterday, considering what she’d been through lately. On the way back from a shipping run Darin had put the throttle all the way up, something he wasn’t really supposed to do outside of an emergency, but seeing Shiori beside him laughing with delight for the first time in days as the wind whipped through her hair quickly silenced all his doubts. It had been a slow work day overall, in keeping with the trend of the last two weeks, and after they’d gotten back she’d fallen asleep in Darin’s arms. Shiori at last looked so peaceful that Tilde hadn’t had the heart to make Darin get up to do another run and had taken the run herself.

Darin smiled at that memory as he finished stowing his gear in his locker and went to check the day’s schedule. It was one of the few good memories lately, and he hoped more would follow. He hated seeing Shiori so upset. As horrible as he felt about everything lately, he felt even worse for Shiori and the fact that a little girl had to go through all this when she should be happily playing with her friends at school. What had she done to deserve this? What had any of them done?

He shook his head hard, trying with only minimal success to clear out the angry thoughts that were beginning to come. Darin told himself that things would get better, and Shiori would eventually become her own happy self again as long as they just took things one day at a time. Today would help in that respect–she was going to work with their mom, and he knew Shiori liked seeing all the different people at Burke’s Tavern. The wait staff loved her immensely, and she always had a good time there.

Darin started his assigned duties, and he was having a fairly normal day until Tilde pulled him aside in the afternoon.
 
 

Chapter Three

He couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Darin hadn’t seen any of it happen: he’d been at work at the time. However, he could clearly picture it in his mind based solely on what Tilde had told him when she took him into her office three days ago to give him the news.

He imagined Shiori giggling as the other waitresses doted on her at Burke’s Tavern. They’d give her little errands and tasks to do for them so she would feel like she was helping and to keep her occupied.

It would be a normal lunchtime crowd, maybe a little less since Merrillans were staying at home more often now. All in all, the scene he saw in his mind’s eye was the same as usual until the stormtroopers entered the tavern. Darin could feel the light mood of the room abruptly change to suspicion and resentment. He heard the Imperials announce they were doing rounds.

Darin figured his mother would have protectively gone to Shiori at that point. She would guard against the Imperials doing anything to another loved one, and she’d likely need to comfort her daughter anyway. Stormtrooper armor was designed to look intimidating, and Shiori was frightened of them enough as it was.

Then two other patrons in the tavern, probably trying to drink away recent painful memories relatively early in the day, reacted to the stormtroopers’ presence. By that time, they might have been drunk enough to forget their common sense but not what they were trying to erase from their minds. A few loud-mouthed comments in the Imperials’ direction turned into louder protests, which turned into something more. Some shoves, a scuffle, a full-out brawl, Darin wasn’t sure.

What he was sure of, though, was the sudden panic erupting throughout the room as the stormtroopers immediately pulled their blaster rifles in response. That caused an already bad situation to become a million times worse. Maybe the stormtroopers felt threatened by the sudden rushing of everyone in the tavern for cover, since they fired. Then they fired again. And again.

When the blasters had quieted, the two drunks were dead. So were Darin’s sister and mother, another person on the wait staff, and two other patrons, one of whom was Cohen’s father, a regular at the tavern both during lunch and for a while after work.

That was the other part of the reason Cohen was standing there next to Darin in the grey drizzle three days after the shootings. The burial services for their family members had concluded, and Darin and the Nuurens were still there, staring at the fresh graves of their loved ones and unwilling to leave just yet.

Most of the other people had left by this time. Bosko’s parents, some of Darin’s old classmates, a handful of coworkers, his former girlfriend, teary-eyed coworkers of Ginala’s, Shiori’s teachers, parents of Shiori’s friends with their children in tow, and even a couple of his dad’s coworkers who knew the family stopped to briefly talk to Darin as they left. If they hadn’t already done so before the services started, they offered their sympathies and condolences to him, and some even offered advice on contacting one of the local emergency organizations if he needed financial counseling or other help.

Darin numbly responded to each person, but their words went right past him. He’d already heard the well-intentioned advice and had received countless condolences at his father’s funeral, and it was ten times worse today. Frankly, Darin was tired of the sympathies and didn’t care about things like speeder payments and expenses anymore. He didn’t want help. He didn’t want pity. He just wanted his family back.

It was all a bit overwhelming. There were too many people there coming up to him and trying to interact with him to make everything better. They were strangers and acquaintances, some of whom seemed to think that they understood exactly what Darin was going through, but he knew they didn’t. They couldn’t. He felt isolated in his grief and alone in the world, and ironically it made him want to be alone to deal with it. It was too much for him, and if he could just retreat, then he would no longer have to act like he was able to handle it. His life was shattered, and he couldn’t be brave anymore...not for all these people, and not for himself.

Darin had tried to be brave when his father had died. He’d needed to be strong for his mother and Shiori, and in some ways that had been his strength. Now that was gone. Ever since, life had seemed pointless and miserable, and Darin had been filled with more grief than he ever remembered feeling in his life. He had a vague sense that he’d tried to sort through his family’s affairs and make decisions about the burial services during the past three days, but everything blurred together and he didn’t really remember any specifics. If asked, Darin couldn’t have said when he’d eaten, slept, or been awake. The only thing he was certain about was that Cohen was the only reason he had not yet succumbed to utter despair.

While Darin was immensely grateful for Cohen’s support, though, at the same time he felt guilty. Cohen had enough to deal with now after the loss of his own father, a difficulty Darin was now acutely familiar with. Cohen had to be strong for his mother and his two younger brothers, Prilo and Hashik, and he didn’t need to burden himself with Darin on top of that.

Darin’s emotions had pretty much cycled between different varieties of guilt, misery and anger since he found himself the sole survivor of his family. Sometimes he felt all three at once. Right now in the cemetery, though, after all the well-wishers had left, misery was prevailing. This was evidenced by the bitter tears on his face as he looked at the graves. The tears couldn’t wash away the images he saw each time he closed his eyes, though.

After a short time, Cohen put his arm around Darin’s shoulders and tried to gently steer him away. "Come on, Darin. Let’s go," he said softly.

Darin wordlessly shook his head and moved a few steps in the other direction. Cohen followed and said quietly, "It’s time to go. We can come back tomorrow if you want."

"You guys can go," Darin said in a small voice while he wiped his eyes. The cold dampness of the drizzle matched the coldness he felt inside. "I’ll meet you back at your place in a while. I just want to be alone."

"First off, we’re not leaving without you. Second, it’s your place now too." Darin had been staying with them for the last few days at Mrs. Nuuren’s insistence. "Third, you can be alone in the house. I’m not going to let you be alone out here."

Darin sniffled and wouldn’t meet Cohen’s gaze. "You’ve got enough to worry about without me getting in the way." Part of him honestly believed that. Part of him wanted to lie and tell Cohen he’d be fine so he wouldn’t feel like he was stealing his friend away from his family. Another part of Darin, though, was desperate for Cohen to realize that Darin really needed him now more than ever.

His best friend since childhood didn’t let him down. "I’ll have less to worry about when I know that you’re there with us. You’re not a burden, and I need to make sure you’re okay. I’m not leaving without you. Now let’s go, please?" Cohen again tried to steer Darin toward his family’s landspeeder.

This time, Darin slowly let himself be led along. He sniffled again and said quietly, "You’ll make a great starship captain, you know."

Cohen looked a bit surprised at Darin’s unexpected comment, but then he gave a small, sad smile at the compliment before saying, "Only because I’ll have the best first mate in the galaxy." He shook Darin by the shoulders a bit, causing Darin to give a ghost of a smile.

When they arrived back at the house from the cemetery, Darin slumped onto the cot he was using in Cohen’s room and buried his face in his hands. First Dad and Boz, now this. My whole family’s gone. Things started to buzz around him and he felt a bit lightheaded, so he lay down. What am I supposed to do now? Until I figure something out, I hope I can just stay with Cohen and give them my income to help with expenses. At least I’m able to do that with the steady job I have, so I won’t be leeching off them like a mynock on a power supply.

Cohen came in a few minutes later after changing out of his dress clothes and sat on his own bed with a quiet sigh. He worriedly watched Darin for a moment before asking quietly, "You okay?"

Darin didn’t answer at first, and then he managed, "No. Not really." He blinked hard. I’ll never be okay again.

"Do you still want to be alone?" Cohen asked.

Another pause, and then Darin repeated, "No. Not really."

"I didn’t think so."

A few more moments passed before Darin softly said, "Hey, Cohen? Thanks."

Cohen smiled sadly and simply responded, "Anytime. You know that." Cohen picked up his loka and half-heartedly played a few notes on it before speaking again. "You know, my mom always said that my dad’s drinking would be the end of him one day. We didn’t figure it would quite happen like this, though."

Darin nodded, not knowing what to say. Cohen was close to his mother and brothers, but his relationship with his father had always been strained. They rarely saw eye-to-eye, and this wasn’t helped by Mr. Nuuren’s tendency to drink a little too much. Darin secretly wondered if the need to take care of his mother and brothers when his dad was drunk was one of the reasons Cohen was so mature and responsible at his age. Darin knew things weren’t always happy in that household, and while he helped Cohen as much as he could, he still never really knew what to say during those times, just like now. Even Darin’s mother had done her best to help by keeping an eye on Mr. Nuuren when he was in the tavern and trying to persuade him to leave or switch to caf when it looked like he was getting close to his limit.

His mother...Cohen’s father...the tavern...innocent lives wasted for no reason at all...Darin swallowed hard and bit his lip as everything came back and hit him with full force again. Just good, innocent people having lunch in a tavern...that’s all. They hadn’t gone looking for trouble, so why had trouble found them? Why? Why? The pressure inside him finally made something snap. He’d reached his limit.

The cot squeaked in protest at Darin’s abrupt movement when he suddenly sat up, his dizziness forgotten, anger blazing in his eyes. "You know those stormtroopers weren’t even arrested?" he said furiously. "I heard they’re still on duty, even though this wasn’t even the first time something like this has happened since the occupation started! Remember those other two times when the Imperials got a little too itchy with their trigger fingers and injured the people in those stores? How can the town guard just stand by and do nothing while they kill people in a tavern?!" His voice started breaking as memories continued to flood his mind, and this time he fought to keep back the tears that threatened to leak them out.

"Because the Guard doesn’t have any authority anymore," Cohen answered in frustration, giving his loka a hard, cacophonic pluck. "The Empire is doing whatever it wants. The Guard’s just there so people can see it and think that Cracians actually still have some control over this whole mess. That’s the only reason the guardsmen aren’t in jail right now–people would know the full extent of the situation if they were, and the Empire can’t allow that just yet. Not until it’s too late for us to do anything about it."

"It’s not like we’d have enough manpower or firepower to go against the Imperials anyway," Darin replied grimly, "especially with that Star Destroyer supposedly parked in orbit overhead. And our ground forces have always been limited because our defense satellites have worked so well. I guess no one up top ever thought that those satellites would be no match for a Star Destroyer."

Darin sighed as he realized how hopeless their situation was, and in a hollow voice he asked, "Do you think this will ever end? Will things ever be normal again?"

Cohen thought for a minute before responding. "Normal like it was three weeks ago? Honestly, no. It will never be like it was, even if the Imperials packed up and moved out right now. Too much has happened already. This situation might end, though. Maybe in the distant future if that rebellion becomes more powerful, but they’ll have to get a lot stronger before they can make any sort of stand against the Empire, and that’s if they’re not wiped out first. Right now I think we’re stuck with this and with a totally different lifestyle, one more of survival than goals and ambition and personal growth."

Darin felt his throat tighten, but deep down he knew that his own private thoughts paralleled what Cohen had just said. As Cohen came to the same conclusions that he had, Darin’s secret hope that he was just being too pessimistic evaporated and left behind an acidic residue in his stomach.
 
 

Chapter Four

The long shadows cast by the setting sun marked the approach of the start of curfew, and Darin and Cohen hurried down the street on their way back from an errand. Walking was dangerous now, but driving was probably even more so, with unhappy and unthinking protestors having a tendency to damage parked vehicles, whether they were Imperial vehicles or Cracian. Tension and hostility from the people of Merrillan in the seven days since the fight at Burke’s Tavern had reached a level that Darin wouldn’t have thought possible.

It was bad enough that tensions had increased. It was made even worse by the Imperials reacting to the heightened friction by imposing a more stringent curfew again as well as stricter laws limiting what people could do in public, either as punishment or to tighten control. In turn, Merrillans became even more unhappy.

To top it all off, Merrillan and the couple remaining cities that were still resisting the Imperials were beginning to be criticized by Cracians in cities that had accepted the "defense teams" from the start. Sometimes it came in the form of gentle, subtly condescending coaxing as people tried to explain that accepting the temporary Imperial rule wasn’t that bad, and if Merrillans would just do that, they wouldn’t be experiencing the unfortunate shootings and harsh curfews. Other times, the criticism came as angry insults and verbal attacks from people who blamed the unrest in towns like Merrillan for any Imperial-imposed restrictions in their own cities, and if those stupid Merrillans would just settle down and shut up, things would be a lot better for everyone.

Darin experienced a lot of this firsthand whenever he made a shipping run to another city. While before the people had always been courteous and respectful, now he could feel himself getting ostracized and shunned when people learned he was from Merrillan. He hated feeling like he’d done something wrong or was a bad person just because of where he was from and because he didn’t agree that giving in to the Imperials would "make everything okay." Darin even heard worried rumors at work that companies in other cities might stop doing business with MTS because they were a Merrillan company, which just stressed him out that much more. He felt himself growing defensive and angry in the face of other Cracians’ attitudes toward them.

He wasn’t alone. Other Merrillans were feeling the same way, and that stubborn defensiveness caused them to band together and become more independent and isolated from the other cities, which created an even greater rift in all relations, whether Cracian or Imperial.

As if to illustrate the point, while Darin and Cohen walked down the street a breeze from the planet’s omnipresent winds carried to them the sounds of a nearby protest, and a fairly large one at that. Probably people not wanting to go in for curfew, Darin thought. He and Cohen stopped to listen.

Neither spoke for a moment, and then Cohen simply said, "Protest."

Darin nodded. "Yeah."

"Sounds like a big one."

"Yeah."

"It’ll be all over the Corvallis news reports tonight."

"To give everyone else yet another reason to hate us."

"The Imperials are probably loving how we’re all turning on each other."

"Are you kidding? I’m sure they’re secretly encouraging it and fanning the flames."

The two friends fell silent again for another few seconds, just listening to the noise. Once more, it was Cohen who broke the silence. "The other cities just don’t understand."

"No, they don’t."

"Not like the people here do."

"Because the other cities haven’t lost friends and family like we have," Darin replied. "They weren’t the ones seeing a firefight outside their windows and suddenly wondering if they were going to survive to see the next day. They weren’t the ones being told that someone they cared about didn’t survive to see the next day. If they knew what all that felt like, they’d be doing the same things we are."

Cohen nodded, and his voice sounded distant. "They just don’t understand. Do they think we’re doing this for fun? Why are they so angry at us when we’re not the ones to blame for all this?" He muttered a curse or two at the Imperials under his breath.

It only took one more heartbeat for them to start wordlessly making their way toward the commotion, with bottled-up bitterness and frustrations just begging to be let out or at the very least heard voiced by a sympathetic soul.

They reached the edge of a large group of people in the middle of a wide street. A man was standing on top of an empty landspeeder, shouting words full of anger and loss at the small group of stormtroopers around the speeder. The crowd was getting restless, shouting opinions strongly supporting the man and raising their hands for emphasis. A couple of stormtroopers were holding their blaster rifles as though they were batons and were trying to shove the nearest people back away from the speeder. The front edge of the crowd never yielded for very long, and each time they were shoved back, they forced themselves even closer to the speeder. The stormtroopers kept nervously looking around as if waiting for their backup to arrive, while the one presumably in charge was unsuccessfully ordering the man off the speeder, trying to place him under arrest.

More people came up from behind to see what was happening, putting Darin and Cohen more in the middle of the crowd. With the added support more people became more outspoken–

–And then a good-sized rock hit the helmet of one of the stormtroopers.

The stormtroopers’ tenuous hold on the control of the crowd evaporated, and with the crowd’s surging and the stormtroopers’ reflexive shots into the mass of people, a riot broke out. Restor Street was submerged in chaos as people ran, people fought, and people were shot. Darin and Cohen, getting much more than they bargained for, turned and tried to run, but that became next to impossible in all the confusion and in the solid mass of bodies. People shoved their way past them in all directions, causing the two friends to quickly become separated. Darin desperately started looking and calling for Cohen, having to jump to see above the heads of the crowd.

The noise was incredible. Glass and wood and vehicles broke. There were triumphant shouts from people who had seized the stormtroopers’ small vehicle as a trophy and were destroying it. Other Merrillans were screaming as shots from the stormtroopers’ blaster rifles entered the crowd and downed their random targets. A few townspeople who had somehow managed to keep personal blasters during the occupation returned fire, but they were sought out and promptly silenced.

The high-pitched whine of repulsorlifts joined the clamor. The whine drew near, split into two and came to a halt in different locations, and then the alarmed and angry shouts from the mass of townspeople grew louder as both ends of the street were blocked by lines of disembarking Imperial soldiers in riot gear.

Frightened people on both ends of the street now had no obvious escape route. In a panic, they turned around and ran back toward the middle of the commotion, clashing head-on with people running from the middle out and who didn’t yet know the road had been barricaded. This caused even more confusion, and panic spread like wildfire. Darin was terrified, and he kept getting shoved and jostled in every direction. It was all he could do to stay on his feet, and he couldn’t find Cohen anywhere.

The newly-arrived Imperials had better equipment to deal with the surge of panicked people, such as riot shields, stun batons and riot guns, which they were using liberally. They were too far away to help the original group of stormtroopers, though, and those troopers were caught in the middle of a mob with only one type of weapon available to them, their E-11 blaster rifles. They began using these even more liberally than they had been as they tried to retreat to a safer area.

Their shots flew heedlessly into the crowd, each one causing more hysteria. After one such random barrage, a recipient let out a scream that shook Darin to his core. The particular scream was a sound he’d never heard before, but it came from a voice Darin knew all too well.

"Cohen!" Darin yelled as he frantically started toward the source of the sound, his soul shriveling up within him. Fighting against the tide of people, it took an eternity for him to get close enough to catch sight of Cohen, who was lying facedown on the ground, bleeding, barely moving, and getting trampled underfoot by the crowd.

"Outta the way! Move! Move!" Darin shouted, even though no one seemed to hear. With a fierce determination Darin started pushing through people harder than ever, and when he got closer, he was rewarded with a blaster shot grazing his left upper arm. He yelled once in pain and surprise, but his voice was instantly drowned out by the scream from the victim behind him who took the full brunt of the blaster bolt. Darin couldn’t bring himself to turn around and look; instead, he reflexively gripped his wound with his right hand. He forced his eyes open a moment later, and through hazy vision he could see Cohen, still alive. Gritting his teeth, Darin continued his upstream battle.

When he finally reached Cohen, he crouched down, tried to forget about his injury and about the people still stepping over and on them in their mad panic, and slung Cohen’s left arm over his shoulders. He stood with difficulty and half-lifted, half-dragged Cohen toward the side of the street. "Cohen! Say something! Stay with me, buddy!" Darin kept talking on the way, praying for a response, but none came.

Getting out with Cohen was even harder than when he had tried getting out on his own, and Darin couldn’t remember any other situation when time had both crawled along and flew by like it was doing then. When they finally made it to the fringes of the crowd along the side of the street, Darin took a split second to regroup against the wall of a building, wipe the sweat out of his eyes, catch his breath and look around for a way out. He spotted a gap between two nearby buildings, and while he had no idea if the narrow alleyway connected with any other streets, he instantly headed for it. Even if it couldn’t get them completely away, it should at least get them out of the mob and offer them some protection.

A small number of other people were starting to disappear into the small gaps between buildings up and down the road. The majority was still clustered in the middle of the street madly trying to run away from forces that had them surrounded, and the rest were unconscious in the street, either knocked out from the riot guns or stun batons, or wounded or dead from the blaster rifles. They were in danger of being trampled underfoot as well if the situation wasn’t brought under control very soon; that was doubtful, however, if the flames starting to lick the windows of several buildings were any indication.

Time continued its battle with itself, but Darin finally made it to the narrow alleyway with Cohen behind three other townspeople who kept running. A large fence blocked the alley about ten meters down, and Darin couldn’t see what was beyond it. It didn’t matter too much, though, since he knew he would never be able to make it over while carrying Cohen. The other people were athletic enough to jump up on some debris at the bottom of the fence, climb the remaining part and vault over, disappearing from sight.

Now that they were out of immediate harm’s way, Darin put Cohen down as gently as he could to assess the damage and try some rudimentary first aid. As he sat Cohen down on the street and began to carefully lean him against a wall, Darin got his first good look at the blaster wound. His best friend had been shot square in the back, and immediately Darin knew that there was no first aid he could perform that would help. His scrambled, panicked mind tried to think of the location of the nearest hospital, but before he could remember it, Cohen coughed and slowly opened his eyes.

"Cohen! Cohen, listen to me, just hold on! I’ll get you to a hospital, okay?"

"I–can’t feel–my legs, Darin," Cohen managed between gasps. The face that girls had found so attractive was now twisted in pain and covered with dirt and scrapes, with blood running out of his broken nose and a corner of his mouth.

"That’s okay, we’ll get you fixed up," Darin told him desperately. "Come on." Darin moved to lift Cohen again.

"No," Cohen mumbled as the gasps lessened. Shocked, Darin stopped and looked at him, holding Cohen upright. Cohen’s voice was becoming bleary, and he was growing dazed. Almost inaudibly, Cohen said, "I–" Then he stopped, his eyes became unfocused and unseeing, and his whole body relaxed as he exhaled.

Darin stared dumbfounded at his friend for a moment before he yelled, "Cohen!" as if it was simply a matter of waking him up. He frantically checked for a pulse but found nothing. "Don’t do this to me!" Darin wildly looked around the empty alleyway and screamed for a doctor at the top of his lungs, but the din of the riot drowned out his voice. Darin leaned Cohen’s body against the wall and unsteadily stood up to run for help, but as soon as he was on his feet, his knees buckled. He sat down hard in exhaustion, the last few weeks leaving him with no more reserves. He stared unseeing at Cohen, feeling more lost than the Katana fleet and knowing that the last rock he had been standing on had just vanished out from under him, leaving nothing but the icy water below.

"Hey, buddy, you okay?" Ferrule Seekins was kneeling on the floor of the holding cell next to a young adult, tapping his shoulder and trying to get him to respond. Like the three other people in the cell, Ferrule had left him alone for a while, but he’d finally gotten concerned enough to go over and check on him. The person hadn’t moved the entire time he’d been there and was just sitting against the wall with his elbows propped on his knees, his fingers entwined tightly in his dusty-blond bangs and his face buried in his hands. Actually, the only way Ferrule could even tell he was alive was that he hadn’t stopped trembling.

Ferrule sighed nervously and fidgeted. The wiry thirty-year-old was at a loss for what else to do, but he wanted to make sure this person didn’t require some kind of medical attention beyond the quickly-applied dressing on a wound on his left upper arm. He poked the person a couple more times in the shoulder. "Come on, kid, you’re starting to scare me. Are you all right?"

Deciding to try something more direct, Ferrule gently parted the other person’s hands to lift his chin up and see his face. Ferrule didn’t encounter any resistance, but he was more than a little unnerved by the vacant green eyes looking at him without seeing him. "Whoa. Hey, snap out of it." He lightly slapped the person’s cheek a few times.

The young adult blinked. Then he blinked again, and again. He slowly started moving his eyes to look around, apparently somewhat confused about exactly where he was.

Ferrule pulled his hand back and waited expectantly. The other person focused on him at last and simply said, "What?" in a small voice.

The dark-haired man smiled a bit, more relieved now. "Good. That’s better. My name’s Ferrule. What’s yours?"

It took a few moments for the answer to come. "Darin."

"Are you okay? Did you hit your head or something? You were out of it for quite a while."

"I’m...okay." He still seemed a bit sluggish to Ferrule, but the older man didn’t press it. "Where am I?"

Ferrule thought the answer was rather obvious, but he simply blamed the question on the fog that still seemed to be enveloping Darin’s mind. He gestured back at the other people in the general lockdown cell with them and said, "You’re spending the night in the Merrillan Penitentiary with the rest of us rioters. Just from what I saw, they caught enough people to fill at least five other cells like this. I’m not sure how long they’re in for, but this cell is just for the overnighters: the ones who were unlucky enough or slow enough to be caught at the scene but aren’t accused of doing anything worse than just being there."

He stopped when he noticed that Darin’s face had become frighteningly pale. His trembling seemed to get worse. "Riot?" Darin asked in a strangled voice. "No, no, no..." He looked like he was going to be sick, and he hugged his knees tightly and buried his head in his arms.

"Listen, Darin," Ferrule said quickly before he lost him again, "they’re allowing us to contact someone to come pick us up in the morning. If you need to–"

"No," came Darin’s muffled reply. "No. I–can’t."

"But won’t you need a ride when they let you out tomorrow?"

"No," Darin repeated, distressed. "I can’t."

He fell silent and wouldn’t respond to any of Ferrule’s subsequent attempts at communication. Finally Ferrule gave up and headed over to one of the cots to try to get some sleep.

Darin was released the next morning at 0800 hours, the end of Merrillan’s nighttime curfew. For some reason, he simply couldn’t bring himself to contact Mrs. Nuuren to come get him, so he’d started walking back in spite of the prison being located on the far outskirts of town.

The events of the previous evening coupled with the lack of sleep all night left Darin feeling lightheaded and the world around him feeling surreal. He stumbled down the main road toward town, not really sure of where to ultimately go. By process of elimination, he finally decided on going to work. He belatedly realized that he was scheduled to be there now anyway, but he was still too apathetic to turn on his comlink and let Tilde know where he was. He’d get there when he got there.

Darin had been walking for over an hour and still had not reached the main part of town when he realized he was going past a familiar fence. He stopped and looked around, and only then did it really register where he was: he was beside the thumper pasture where Smokey lived. Darin made his way to the fence and looked over it.

The pasture was empty. It was the first time Darin had ever seen it like that. He could only stare for a minute, and then he noticed a sign hanging on the outside of the main barn. Squinting, Darin could just make out the words–apparently the owner had moved the thumpers to Legis Bay, one of the cities where things were pretty calm and safe. The sign invited prospective clients to come visit the new ranch.

He ended up standing there for a while, just staring at the strangely empty field. Darin had no idea how long it was before he heard a landspeeder pull over to the side of the road near him and stop.

Glancing over his shoulder, he recognized the speeder as the one belonging to the Nuurens. His gut turned cold and he flinched, then he turned back to the vacant pasture.

He heard the speeder door open and close a moment later, and then Mrs. Nuuren tentatively called out, "Darin?"

Darin couldn’t make himself face her. He wanted to hide or run away, but he couldn’t do that either. His throat tightened to the point where it was hard for him to breathe, and he chewed on his lip and kept his gaze fixed on a tree in the pasture.

She slowly came up beside him. "I was on my way to pick you up." Her voice was gentle, but at the same time it was ragged; Darin could tell she’d had a very hard night. His insides grew colder. "I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner–I got caught up this morning with some things that had to be done. Did you walk all this way?"

Mrs. Nuuren put an arm around his shoulders and tried to give him a soft hug. Darin didn’t move, and he felt himself tense inexplicably. He also had to fight the suddenly strong urge to pull away. For some reason he was badly frightened of something–of what, he wasn’t sure–and not knowing the cause or object of that fear just made it worse. He started trembling slightly. Everything was just so out-of-control lately.

When he didn’t answer and didn’t look at her, the small woman asked quietly, "Are you okay?" After another silence-filled pause, Mrs. Nuuren continued shakily, "I got worried when you two didn’t make it back before curfew started and you never answered your comlinks, and then when I heard about the riot...The hospital called me about–about Cohen. They didn’t have any information about you, but after I called around, someone suggested I try the jail. They told me you were there and that you’d be released in the morning, and I couldn’t come last night because of the curfew." She stopped for a moment, sniffled, and then asked in a teary voice, "Darin, what happened?"

Darin bit his bottom lip hard and squeezed his eyes shut. That proved to be a mistake, however, when it offered him a clear mental picture of the chaos and the panic and the pain from the previous evening and yet another opportunity to relive it. To escape it, he opened his eyes but was rewarded only with the sight of emptiness where once there had been his sister and his simple, happy life. His vision blurred. Turning his head slowly, he saw the distorted image of a brown-haired, brown-eyed person standing next to him.

He blinked once, sending the tears down his face and clearing his vision. He’d known that was Mrs. Nuuren beside him, not Cohen, but deep inside there had been that one sliver of irrational hope kept alive by his emotional exhaustion. Now as Darin looked at Mrs. Nuuren, two things happened. First, with a stupefying blow of finality, that sliver of hope was gone, and Darin realized Cohen would never be standing beside him ever again, no matter what. Second, he at last learned what he was so afraid of: the exact situation he found himself in at that moment, which was facing the mother of his best friend whom he had so utterly failed.

It didn’t take long for his vision to cloud again. Darin wanted to tell her he was sorry. He wanted to tell her it was his fault for not preventing them from getting into the riot and for not doing enough to save Cohen. He wanted to tell her it should have been him instead. All he could do, though, was finally blurt out in a pain-filled, shaky voice, "He’s–Cohen–he’s–he’s–"

Darin lost the remainder of his composure or denial and started sobbing uncontrollably. Mrs. Nuuren started crying again as well and wrapped him in a tight hug, one that Darin now returned equally. They stayed like that along the roadside for a long time. One mourned the loss of her oldest son; the other mourned the loss of his lifelong best friend.
 
 

Chapter Five

"You’re leaving, aren’t you." It was more of a statement than a question.

Darin bit his bottom lip and glanced at Mrs. Nuuren standing beside him without meeting her gaze. "Yeah," he said softly.

"I figured," Mrs. Nuuren said. She looked back out the window of Cohen’s room at the larger of Craci IV’s two small moons and continued, "You have that same look in your eye that Cohen always got when he said he wanted to go to the Imperial Naval Academy. His look was much farther off, though. More distant. He knew he couldn’t go for a couple more years, and that was before we started really hearing about everything happening around the galaxy. Yours seems much more immediate."

Darin looked at his feet and continued listlessly shifting his grip on Cohen’s donri scoop. When he thought of how many games of donri he had played with Cohen while growing up and throughout his life...

He turned his gaze back to the window to avoid those overwhelming thoughts. While he watched, Darin saw a firebug flying lazily outside. A few seconds later, the insect paused in midair, glowed for an instant and then burst apart in a quick and rather dramatic death.

I’m supposed to make a wish now, Darin thought, feeling hollow. But somehow the notion that something good will come out of a living thing’s death doesn’t seem to be true anymore. In the end, though, he did make a wish (three, actually), not because he really believed it would come true, but because Shiori had. I wish I had my family back. I wish I had my friends back. I wish I had my life back.

He tore his eyes away from the window. Everywhere Darin looked, all he saw was reminders of what he’d lost. It was becoming too hard for him to take, but he had one important question to ask before he let himself give up all the rest of it. "Mrs. Nuuren," he said quietly, "do you want me to stay to help take care of Prilo and Hashik? I will. It’s the least I could do after all that you and Cohen have done for me, and I don’t want to just leave if you need help."

The small woman smiled sadly. "Thank you, Darin. You’re a really good kid, you know that? You know you’re more than welcome to stay, but if you feel you need to go, then you should go. You don’t owe me anything." She paused a bit. "As for your offer, Prilo will be an adult next year, and between that and the help of my sisters, we’ll make it through. I appreciate it, but don’t feel obligated to us."

Darin nodded. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed now that there were no roadblocks in his way. On one hand was the sight of an open yet hazardous road that would allow him to escape the recent pain, and on the other was a secret desire to be fenced in and stay with the familiar past, as well as an excuse to not face the fear of starting down that unknown road. He sighed softly. Either way, he was running away from something, so the question then became what did he want to run toward? More emotions, both good and bad, factored in to that decision, but it was a decision that, deep down, he knew he’d already made. Something insistent inside him was pointing the way, and he couldn’t ignore it even though it scared him to death. "Then there’s nothing left for me here."

"Do you know what you’re going to do?"

"I’ve got something in mind."

She looked sideways at him, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "You’re a good kid, Darin," she repeated. "You’ll do fine." Then she turned and hugged him gently, avoiding touching the bandages and bacta patch on his arm. "Just promise me you’ll be careful." He nodded, and she let him go. With a motherly touch, Mrs. Nuuren brushed his bangs away from his eyes, just as carefully avoiding the scrapes and bruises he had gotten on his face from people’s knees and feet hitting him while he pulled Cohen out from the mob. "Better get some sleep. You’ll have some busy days coming up."

Mrs. Nuuren had been correct. It took a solid week and a half to settle what was left of his family’s affairs by sorting through the endless forms and documents with the Cracian government and legal representatives, the bank, and the realtor.

The hardest part had been trying to tie up all the loose ends without providing a way to get in contact with him later on. Darin finally settled on using his house’s address for everything first like he wasn’t planning on moving, and then going to the realtor last. When the sale of the house to the realtor was being negotiated, Darin first tried to tell them he didn’t yet have a new address, and he’d send it to them once he was settled somewhere in Corvallis. The realtor wouldn’t accept that, though, so Darin then had to spend some time in Corvallis looking for the cheapest apartment available. When he found one, he paid the year’s lease up front and took the apartment’s address and signed lease contract back to the realtor. It had cost Darin a lot of money, more than he thought he could really afford, but he didn’t want to default on any contracts and have them come looking for him, and if nothing else, it allowed negotiations with the realtor to continue.

Lots of forms and one very shaky signature later, the house was sold to the realtor. Darin was given a day to vacate, and he was glad he’d already gotten most of the house cleaned out by then in preparation for the sale. He’d had to quit his job earlier, but his coworkers wanted to help him out, so they’d borrowed a freight landspeeder from MTS and helped him move all the furniture to a store to be sold. Mrs. Nuuren had also helped by teaching him how to let go of all the things he wanted to keep for sentimental reasons but couldn’t practically take with him.

After all that and all the nights of packing boxes and taking them in the mornings either to stores to be sold or to the town’s disaster relief organization to be donated to other people, Darin was essentially done with the house by the time he sold it. Just a few hours into his vacating day, the last large boxes had been packed and taken away, and the house that was so full of life a mere six weeks ago was now nothing but blank walls, empty rooms and echoing hallways.

He sat on the kitchen counter for a short time, not quite ready to leave yet. He’d known since yesterday that he’d be finalizing the house sale today with the realtor, and at the time he’d figured he should get everything wrapped up at once, so he had told Mrs. Nuuren he’d be leaving afterward. Well, not immediately afterward, Darin amended. He had a couple more places to stop, but by this time tomorrow, he’d be gone. After the frantic pace of the last week and a half, he needed to just sit quietly and spend a final few minutes in the house where he had lived his whole life.

Sighing, he slid off the counter at last and slung his duffel bag over his shoulder. It was the same bag he’d used to carry his donri gear, and it still had his jersey number of seventeen stitched on the outside, though the only relevant item remaining in it was his donri scoop. The scoop and the small pin of his pilot’s wings were the only "useless" personal items of his that he had refused to give up. The rest of the bag was filled with a few sets of clothes, a bunch of holodisks containing holos of family and friends, a datapad and datacards with some legal documents and recreational reading material, Shiori’s favorite thumper figurine, and the small ceremonial water flask from his parents’ wedding.

Darin took one more look around the house, gave the interior a sad half-smile, then turned and walked out. He made sure the door was locked securely, then he patted his vest pocket to make sure he had the datacard with the money from his family’s emptied bank account and the sale of the house. After one final look at the house, he began walking down the street.

He stopped at the cemetery, where a disproportionate amount of new graves mingled in with the old ones. Darin's first stop was Bosko’s grave, which he had nearly gotten accustomed to visiting. He spent a minute or two there in silence before going to Cohen’s grave.

Out of all of them, Cohen’s was the one that Darin always had the most problems approaching. Maybe it was because Cohen’s death was the most recent, or maybe it was because his death had been different in a lot of ways from the others, but for whatever reason, each step toward the headstone was a hard-fought battle of willpower. It improved slightly each day, and while he still had problems, it was better now than it had been at Cohen’s funeral. Darin had been an internally emotional wreck then, and he still didn’t know how he’d managed to get through it.

Once he reached Cohen’s grave, Darin forced himself to stay for a short time since he wasn’t certain when he’d get another chance to come. Maybe by that time, though, it would be easier. Maybe by then, he would have done something he needed to do for his friend and his own family.

There was one more place Darin needed to go. He went and sat beside his family’s headstone for a long time, absently cleaning bits of dirt off of it and then slowly tracing the carved letters with his fingertips. As time passed, he sensed he was stalling and just delaying his departure, but there was an odd sense of peace in that place that he needed. It was as if his family was there watching him and listening to him, and there was some comfort in that which didn’t make him feel quite so alone.

Darin had come to this grave many times since the occupation started. He’d said a lot of things to the wind and the headstone, everything from apologies to menial updates about his life and local events to countless "I miss you’s." Each funeral had forced him to say goodbye, but now he was saying a different type of goodbye. Darin had thought it would be easier than the first kind, but now he was finding that was not necessarily true.

He gathered his courage, slowly stood up and went to the foot of Shiori’s small grave. While he gazed at the grave markers he had prayed he’d never have to see in his lifetime, the tears threatened to come, but there were none left. As soft as the breeze swirling around him, he said, "I never wanted to do this. Say goodbye, I mean, and especially like this. I was never going to leave. I was going to stay here with you, and we were all going to live forever. That’s how it’s supposed to work, isn’t it?" Darin sniffled, and when the breeze didn’t provide him with an answer, he said in a small voice, "Well, it should be."

He stood there in silence for another minute, and then he continued, "So here I am, finding myself faced with a decision I never, ever thought I’d have to make. I can either stay here in town, being reminded every day that you’re not here and watching the same thing happen to more people, or..." Darin’s voice trailed off before dropping to a nearly inaudible level. "Or I can do something about it." His voice returned to its previous soft volume. "When I was trying to decide, I rambled on about it enough to you that you already know the details and know my decision. But damn it, I never thought it would be this hard."

Darin took a few deep breaths before forcing himself to go on. "If it’s possible to miss you more than I already do, I’m sure I will. Please don’t think I’m abandoning you. I’m not. I’ll never forget you, and I’m doing this to remember you. I’m leaving because I can’t stand to stay here now without you and because I want to find a way to fight the evils the Empire has committed here. I think you’ll all understand. I hope."

He took one more deep, steadying breath and looked up at the overcast sky, the sky that could no sooner keep the Empire out than keep its own people in. He looked back at the graves of his family and best friends, and he knew he had to say it now because he’d never again find the courage to try. "Goodbye," he struggled to say, but his throat was dry and no sound came as he mouthed the word. He bit his lip, took his bag and walked away without looking back.

The route from the cemetery to the Nuurens’ house was becoming painfully familiar, and it wasn’t long at all before Darin arrived there to find the family waiting out front for him with their landspeeder ready to go. Without a word he put his duffel bag in the back of the landspeeder and went over to the broken family.

He knelt down and gave young Hashik a hug, which the kid gratefully returned, sniffling. Then Darin stood up and faced Cohen’s mother.

She managed a sad smile and held out a familiar-looking datapad. Darin recognized it when he took it: it was an older datapad, one that did not access data off of interchangeable datacards but instead had its information loaded permanently onto its hard disk. It contained an old collection of stories of past naval battles of the Republic, including some rather obscure ones, and Cohen had found this datapad in a neighborhood sale years ago. It had been one of his most treasured possessions, and in his quest to learn as much about captaining a ship as he could, he’d read it so often that he’d practically memorized the whole thing.

"I found this today, and I think Cohen would have wanted you to have it," Mrs. Nuuren said to Darin while he stood there speechless. "I’m not sure if it’ll help you in whatever you’re planning to do, but it might, someday."

Darin was finally able to look at her and say, "Thank you. For this, and–for everything. And for everything else."

She pulled him close and hugged him for a long moment, saying, "Anytime. You know that." At last she separated from him. "Is there anything else you need?"

Darin shook his head while he carefully put the datapad in his duffel bag. "I don’t think so. I have all my family’s savings, what little there was. I sold the house and speeder, and I have that money too, minus all the funeral expenses, the apartment lease and every other debt that had to be paid off." He shrugged when he looked back at her. "I’ve told everyone who’s asked that I’m moving to Corvallis to get a job in the city now that my family’s gone. I can’t think of anything else, but I’ve never done anything like this before."

Mrs. Nuuren took both of his hands in hers. "I’m sure you’ve gotten everything. Cohen always said you were the only one in the group with his head on straight." She smiled sympathetically as Darin looked away momentarily, pleasure and pain mixed together on his face. She squeezed his hands gently. "You know you’re always welcome here, and don’t hesitate to ask if there’s anything you need at all. Be careful, okay, Darin?"

"You too," he said somberly. With a final squeeze, they released their hands, and Darin slowly walked to the landspeeder. Mrs. Nuuren quickly hugged Prilo, who then climbed into the speeder’s front passenger seat. With a brief wave, Darin pulled the speeder around and headed down the road toward Merrillan’s small spaceport. Just before they were out of sight down the road, Darin looked back and saw Mrs. Nuuren and Hashik still watching them go.

Darin and Prilo, Cohen’s 14-year-old brother, had taken the speeder to the spaceport and from there were taking the Nuurens’ small transport, Skybolt, toward the much larger spaceport in Corvallis. Darin sat at the controls of the ship, looking out the window at the ocean shoreline forty kilometers to the north. He had spent a lot of time at the ocean with his family and friends, and he’d learned to swim in those chilly waters. The beach was a therapeutic place as well, and Darin went there a lot after his father died, at least until the Imperials closed it off.

In an attempt to escape the depression caused by the memories the ocean provided, Darin shifted his gaze from outside the ship to inside, but unbidden memories were waiting for him there, too. He couldn’t count the number of times he, Cohen and Bosko had taken Skybolt up for flights. Bosko had enjoyed flying, but not nearly as much as Cohen and Darin. When he was fifteen, Darin’s parents had surprised him with a gift of private flying lessons, a gift Darin had treasured more than anything else in the world–so much so