CHAPTER 1

"beware an old man in a profession where most die young"

So, let's not beat around the bush here. I'm a Stormtrooper, AS-0091 and proud of it. Been fighting and killing enemies of the empire for most of my life, and if that offends you, you might just want to put this down, and walk away. Do me a favour and keep walking till you hit vacuum. I've been a trooper longer than the term "Stormtrooper". From the end of the outer rim sieges till end of the empire itself I wore the black and white. I've seen governments fall and rise again. I've killed more sentients than some plagues. I've seen and fought Jedi with their laser swords and savages with sticks and rocks. I've served everywhere, from the core worlds to the outer rim and every ship and chunk of rock in between. And so, if you're still reading this, and not sucking down vacuum, you'd better believe me when I tell you this; everything you THINK you know, about the empire, about the "rebellion" is bouma-shit.

I was born on Corellia in 37 bby (as the years are now reckoned). But when I was about 5 my dad got a "big" promotion and we moved to Coruscant. So, that's what I really remember growing up on Coruscant, the son of a security force sector-chief.

When you watch old vids (or those kriffing rebel propaganda videos) Coruscant looks like this pristine city of smiling, happy people who walk around without a care in world, personal security the furthest thing from their mind. And maybe it was, on the top levels. But people forget Coruscant is a "hive" world, layer upon layer, floor on floor, sector upon sector. Just one massive fetid mass of biology and plasteel pressed in on itself. Over a trillion sentients crammed into five thousand floors. I lived at the bottom of the middle, maybe 5 floors above the "dark" zones, areas that were "no longer part of the city." My father's job was to keep rot from moving uptown, to keep it contained down there in the dark. Honestly, I have no idea how he did at his job, but as a child and teen I idolized him. To this day, the most frightened I've ever been was the first time I took a wrong turn, went too far down and got myself lost down there. It's subtle, going down there in the dark, there's no big CAUTION holotape, no sudden lighting change just a realization that the people have started to watch you with a predatory hunger. Saw that look a lot in my career, mostly in backwaters across the outer rim. In all those places, you're like a cessrog in a pot of water, the heat turns up so gradually you don't notice till you're cooked.

While I couldn't tell you objectivity whether my father was any good at his job I can tell you the toll it took on him. I know that look now, that blank thousand-yard stare, the silences, the alcoholism. I know now that he was a soldier fighting a war, and war takes its toll. I know what you're thinking, that my father was a drunk and probably beat me raw after a rough day to relieve his own stress. You'd be wrong of course. I'd get a thwack on the head for foolishness a time or two but for the most part he was far too tired for that sort of nonsense. My mum was a different story, for such a tiny lady she packed a wallop. The only time I actually remember my father beating me was after I got lost in the dark zones when I was 9. He came in himself to find me and had he been more than a few minutes later I'd probably have been dead and parted out in the sector bod-chopshop. What I remember most about it was that after the beating he hugged me, and I realized that he was crying just near to breaking down silently sobbing. That, I think, was the last real day of my childhood.

No one ever payed attention to politics in downtown. I know it seems strange, we lived in the capital of the galactic republic, but nobody gave a rusty half a cred about it. Seemed to us that there wasn't much to pay attention to. Nothing ever got done up top, nothing ever changed at the bottom; and most of us hivers privately wondered that if nothing ever got fixed here, a mere twenty kilometres below the Senate, how did anything get done light-years away? Then came the rebellion of the trade federation, and you could really see just how out of their depth the senators were. World after world fell to the droid armies until… well you know what happened, the Jedi stepped in pulled the clone army out of their mystic arseholes and took the fight to them. That shit was everywhere, on every vid screen, holo-plex and in every conversation. Everybody had their favourite Jedi-general. I was a fan of Aayla Secura for obvious reasons (I WAS a teenage boy for stars' sake). And everybody loved the adventures of Kenobi and Skywalker, that was holo-drama at its finest. I used to watch that show every week with my classmates. Mum would watch once in awhile too, unless it was an episode with Duchess Satine, she was not a fan of the "new mandalore" government. I still don't know how Kenobi and Skywalker were supposed to have got into and out of all those scrapes every week but I guess "the force was with them" whatever in the hell that's supposed to mean.

Around that time, Chancellor Palpatine became Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and… well shit started to get done. The money and equipment my father was always trying to requisition actually showed up. The ROE (rules of engagement) changed to allow more aggressive enforcement, and the dark levels not only stopped growing up but started receding back down. My father actually smiled sometimes without having to force it. And most importantly, to my youthful self, he finally warmed up to the idea of me joining the family business. That's all I could think about back then. Well again I was a teenage male and so there were other things on my mind, but apart from that the only thing I wanted to do was join the force and help my dad. I sometimes wonder what I'd think of him now after all I've been through, just another sec-force captain on another hive world. I doubt he'd live up to my adolescent idolatry, but that's one of the shitty parts of getting old I guess. All your heroes fail you eventually.

Well obviously I didn't become a sec-ie. So, what happened you ask? What happened to that young idealist who wanted to fight crime and marry Aayla Secura? Well the Jedi happened, that's what. I don't think there's a core-worlder my age who doesn't remember where they were when the news came down. Emergency session of the Senate, all forces to high alert, the clone troopers everywhere. And then the broadcast, Chancellor Palpatine leaning heavily on his aide to take the podium and announce that the Jedi had turned on us. Tried to murder him in his office and take control the senate. And his face… he looked like they'd tried to slagging melt him. And this was only few months after the seps has attacked the capital and kidnapped him. The fury was palpable, in his voice in the senate and in the streets. Dad was out and I, in my infinite teenage wisdom, decided I was going to go "help." What variety of help my 17-year-old self could possibly offer never crossed my mind but the outcome was that I was there when it happened.

Order 66 it was called. Old Palpatine, with his typical foresight, had already prepared an opord (operation order) for this situation. The troopers abroad shot their Jedi leaders and on Coruscant the temple was raided. The troopers and sec-force were deployed to keep any fleeing Jedi from escaping off world or down into the dark sectors. Anybody gets down into the dark and you've got a hell of a task digging them out again. You've probably already figured out what happened from the context, huh? The shitty part was that I saw it. I won't try to say that it hasn't affected me, seeing your father and essentially your entire way of life get cut in half by a lightsaber tends to leave an impression, but as old as I am now and times being what they are I've come to terms with it.

There was the funeral and then the pension brief. And after the shock wore off I came to the following realizations. One: we could no longer afford to live on Coruscant as we were. And two: I had lost ALL desire to join sec-force. My mother was able to get a job waiting tables in a local juma and sabaak den. That, along with dad's death benefits, meant we could keep our flat. But I could no longer attend the school I was in. Hell, we could barely afford to eat, luckily sec-force looks after its own and we were only hungry maybe 3 days in 10. After the purge, everything seemed to go bad. Sure, the dark levels were getting cleaned up but that no longer seemed to be as important as it once was.

My 18th life day was a meagre affair, mom had managed to scrounge up a second or third hand Holo-emitter and someone to upload an old family pic of her and dad on to it. That and a bunch of dad's old stuff which was her unspoken but not too subtle way of telling me that I was now an adult and needed to start contributing. Life lesson: Mandalorian Ladies are not on big on subtle or gentle. I spent the rest of the day just walking different levels of the sector; dad's old beat. I even found the alleyway where dad had found me cowering when I got lost, now home to a droid part shop and a store which advertised "consumables" which everybody knew was a front for a spice den. I spent a good half hour there just standing, literally in my father's boots mind a perfect blank. I finally shook my head and ran almost directly into a clone trooper. He was keeping watch while one of his brothers lit up a holo-mercial. "Join today" it said with a flashing image of a trooper helmet. So, I asked him what the slag that has supposed to mean. He shrugged and said simply "I don't ask questions."

I'd like to say I don't believe in destiny, but I've seen a lot of strange shit in my life. And maybe this story does seem a bit contrived in retrospect but that's what I remember. I turned 18, went for walk, got lost in my own head and saw a recruitment poster. So, maybe destiny. Probably been better if I'd seen one of the real fancy ones in the upper levels "avenge the republic" or even better the "fury of the betrayed" one with the animated leering Jedi stabbing a trooper in the back. But the one that got me was just "join today." I didn't though. I joined the next. Took me that long to find the recruitment station.