Major Faction Days of Imperial Lives [Galactic Empire]

"You can stand to see the Imperial flag reign across the galaxy?"


On Sacorria, Subcitizen Cierra Typhe wakes at 4:00 AM. Her six allotted hours of sleep are over, and it’s time to begin her eighteen-hour shift picking muja fruit. She rises from her hard cot and pulls on her work jumpsuit, then joins the line for her breakfast ration - a bowl of nutripaste and a mug of weak caf. She suspects the farm overseers put something else in the caf, something that keeps her mind foggy and dulls the ache in her muscles, but she doesn’t really care. It makes it easier to get through the day… and what could she do about it anyway?

As she boards the speeder bus that will take her to Field 177 Aurek, Cierra reflects on how she ended up here. She was a waitress in a Coruscant diner, back before the Empire came. Her manager used to try to hit on her, and when she shut him down, he held a grudge. After the invasion, that manager adapted to the Imperial way of living fast. He re-themed the whole diner, offered discounts to Imperial servicemen and functionaries, quoted Imperial propaganda. When he reported Cierra as unpatriotic, his report had weight. Her Citizenship Score plummeted.

She misses Coruscant. She misses her family. She hasn’t been on Sacorria for long yet, but she already finds it hard to picture their faces. As the speeder bus trundles to a stop and the workers get out, she tries to imagine what her little brother watches now that his favorite Holonet show has been banned. Hopefully not that TIE Cubs nonsense; hearing the incessant theme song over and over would drive her poor mom crazy. But that’s an unpatriotic thought, and Cierra pushes it away. She’s got to show patriotism if she’s going to improve her Score.

She holds up her Citizen Registration Interface to clock in, then grabs her basket.


On Balmorra, Citizen Gavin Delstee wakes at 6:00 AM. He doesn’t have to be at work until 8:00, but he’s been setting his alarm earlier; his Citizenship Score was docked 100 points after he was five minutes late to the office last week. He rolls out of bed and gives his girlfriend Myree a kiss on the cheek. They’ve been living together for a year, and dating for three, but he can’t call her his wife, even though he’d like to; his Request for Civil Union form hasn’t been approved yet. He supposes it doesn’t matter too much. They can’t afford a wedding anyway.

Though he’s anxious about time, Gavin takes a few minutes to steam his work uniform, getting rid of wrinkles and stains. He’s been saving money to take Myree to a nice restaurant in the next town over, one with waiters and fancy menus. But travel outside his district of residence requires permit approval, and he’s worried he won’t get it if his Citizenship Score gets docked again for slovenly appearance. Quickly combing his hair, he locks his apartment door behind him and walks toward the bus stop, munching on a reheated kessinnamon roll on the way.

The bus arrives at 6:30 sharp, and Gavin smiles - he’s going to be early. But at that moment, a stormtrooper patrol walks around the corner. Gavin quickly salutes, just like the reel on Imperial HoloVision taught him. He’s pleased when his Citizen Registration Interface chimes - plus ten Citizenship Points for a well-angled salute to military personnel. His face falls a little, though, when the stormtroopers get on the bus; there’s going to be no room for him. The next bus in this direction won’t come for an hour; at that point, he’ll risk being late again.

Suppressing an unpatriotic sigh, Gavin begins walking to the Balmorran Arms office complex.

On Imperial Center, Prime Citizen Yary Lya'Krey wakes at 8:00 AM. She gets out of bed and pads down the hallway of her modest-sized private home, heading for the small shrine room at the back of the house. She turns on “The Throne Speaks” in time for their morning devotional, and keels before the image of the Emperor that she keeps in a holoframe on the altar. Word by word, she repeats the prayers that the Senior Magistrate leads over her HoloNet transceiver, bowing so low that her forehead touches the ground. Her CRI chimes - plus twenty-five points.

With the devotional complete, Yary gets up and walks to her kitchen, where she starts a cup of caf brewing. As she begins frying up a few strips of nuna bacon, she sees those two human kids at her window again, pointing and staring at her. She doesn’t say a word, just quietly shuts the curtains. Yary is a Bothan, and she knows what ISPN says about her species - duplicitous, untrustworthy, prone to be spies. But she’s worked hard to show how loyal she is to the new regime, to prove that she’s one of the good ones, and she’s earned the perks she enjoys.

After breakfast, Yary walks over to her office room and boots up her console. She’s an assistant district manager for COMLIT - the Commission for Logistics, Industry, and Transportation - and her position means that she can typically work from home. She prefers it that way; she doesn’t have to take the bus anymore now that she owns a speeder, but people in the office stare at her just as much as people on public transit used to. She starts sorting through the permits that have been forwarded to her by the clerks she manages, resolving one ticket at a time.

It’s important, and she’s glad to have a role in the Emperor’s design. Or so she tells everyone.

It’s noon on Sacorria, and Cierra’s labor battalion has one hour left before their mid-shift meal break. Sweat is dripping down her back, soaking through her jumpsuit, and all she can think about is how much she misses hot showers. She’s picking the muja fruit bare-handed, even though the rough stems cut and blister her fingers. She thinks someone stole her gloves a few nights ago, probably to replace their damaged ones. But if she asks for replacements, she’ll get her Citizenship Score docked for failure to maintain Imperial equipment. So she makes do.

Pausing to wipe sweat from her eyes, Cierra looks up the line of pickers and sees another worker - Maro, she thinks his name is - sitting down. He’s an older man, probably in his sixties, and the work has been hard on him. A few months ago, Cierra wouldn’t have said anything. The rule in her old Coruscani neighborhood was to live and let live. But now, seeing someone who’s resting outside of an approved work stoppage feels like an opportunity to her. She quietly catches a supervisor’s attention, pointing over at Maro. The guards head for him.

It doesn’t feel good to watch them haul him back to his feet, or to hear the chime of his CRI as he loses a hundred points of Citizenship Score. But it’s all drowned out by the ding of her own interface - plus fifty points for reporting misuse of company time. Cierra doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life here; she wants to go home, to see her family again. The quickest way out is to watch the others, boost her score back up at their expense. And it’s not like they’re innocent in all this; someone stole her gloves, after all, and they’re all watching her just as much.

She keeps her head down so that she can’t see the hurt look Maro throws at her.

It’s 2:00 on Balmorra, and Gavin is over halfway through his day at the office. He made it in on time, but the repulsorlift wake of a passing speeder spattered mud on his freshly-polished shoes, and his supervisor shot him a look that didn’t bode well. Gavin resolves to push himself extra hard for the day, and that means pushing his crews extra hard. He coordinates work orders for teams of Subcitizens in the nearby Balmorran Arms manufacturing plant, all working to assemble components for combat droids. Today, their breaks will be ten minutes shorter.

Team Cresh is falling behind, so Gavin walks over to the plant to motivate them personally. He starts out with platitudes, telling the exhausted workers that they’re all an integral part of the Emperor’s design and they need to pull together in His service. When that doesn’t get him anywhere, he gets angry, shouting at them that he’ll report them for lax and incompetent labor if they don’t get back on schedule. It doesn’t feel right to be so harsh. He’s not that kind of guy. But these people wouldn’t be in the labor battalions unless they’d done something wrong.

When production restarts, Gavin walks back to his office, trying to ignore the sick feeling coiling in his stomach. He reminds himself that he’s doing this for Myree. She wants kids someday, and if he wants to get COMLIT approval for reproduction, he’s going to have to make sure he’s got a strong Citizenship Score. He needs to have a talk with her about being less obvious about her Echani heritage. Everyone is supposed to embrace being one people and one culture in the new Empire, and the Office of Imperial Truth doesn’t like displays of diverse ancestry.

It’ll be a tough conversation, so he’ll pick up dessert on the way home.

It’s 4:00 on Imperial Center, and Yary could probably sign off for the day; she’s ahead of schedule on processing approvals, and has handled almost everything that landed in her inbox. But she didn’t get this far by doing the minimum, so she just allows herself a quick break. Her son Kenth - a good, strong Imperial name, changed from his Bothan birth name of Utric - has gotten home from school, and she wants to make him a snack and settle him in front of the transceiver before she finishes up. She heads back to the living room to check on him.

Kenth is ten now, and full of questions Yary can’t safely answer. He wants to know why the other kids at school stare at him, and why they don’t go out to eat together anymore. Most of all, he wants to know what happened to his dad. Yary is doing everything she can for him. He attends a private school that costs almost as much per year as her mortgage. It’s worth it to give him the shield of status; a rich alien at a small, elite is harder to bully than a poor one thrown to the akk-wolves at one of the public institutes. But she can’t tell him the truth.

Kenth is sitting on the couch, watching an episode of Life on Brentaal. He sees himself in the character of Tovo, who’s about his age and interested in a lot of the same things - technology, mostly. She brings him a plate of flash-fried zuchii and reminds him to get started on his homework. Like Tovo, if he wants to be an engineer, he’s going to need to study hard and make sure he gets tracked into officer-level schooling. She’d rather he end up as an engineer than just a technician. When she’s gone, he’s going to need status of his own to protect him.

She tousles his fur and then heads back to her office to finish up.

It’s 6:00 on Sacorria, and Cierra has made it to a 15-minute work stoppage. They’re almost done picking this field anyway, and she holds a secret hope that they’ll be allowed to finish early - or at least to switch to an easier task, like stowing tools or sorting ripe fruit from spoiled. A commissary droid makes its rounds through the work gang, and Cierra decides to spend some of the small stash of Imperial credits her mother sent her on a candy bar. Usually she waits until Taungsday for what she calls her Taungsday treat, but she’s lost track of what day it is anyway.

She holds up her CRI to the droid’s scanner, initiating an automatic balance transfer. The droid hums for a moment, processing, then holds out the candy bar. Cierra unwraps it, inhaling the scent of the chocolate - the only good-smelling thing anywhere in the fertilizer-reeking farm. When she gets out of here - she’s telling herself that she will - she’s never going near another muja fruit again. She leans in to take a bite, but just before the candy hits her tongue, someone barrels into her from the side. It’s Maro, his eyes wild, grabbing frantically for the candy.

A pair of guards appear almost instantly, slamming electro-batons into Maro’s back. Cierra can feel her hair standing on end as the current courses through him, frazzled by the proximity. He sags, and they drag him off of her. She hears one mutter something about reeducation before they haul him away, back to one of their security speeders. She’s not sure whether she should feel more guilty or less guilty now than before, so she tries to feel nothing at all. She reaches down, brushes soil off the dropped candy bar, and takes a bite. Finally, something good.

She spends the entire eight minutes remaining in the break slowly savoring that candy bar.

It’s 8:00 on Balmorra. Gavin is sitting on the couch, where he’s likely to end up sleeping. His conversation with Myree didn’t go well; she’s hurt and upset. He realizes that he forgot to get a dessert on the way home, like he meant to. Maybe he can get one now, as a peace offering. He leaves the apartment and heads to the turbolift, only to find it out of order; with virtually no regulations on residential maintenance and safety, who knows how long it’ll be before it gets fixed. He takes the stairs down from the sixteenth floor, dreading the climb back up.

There are no stormtroopers clogging the bus stop this time, so Gavin scans his CRI and climbs aboard. He rides for just one stop, down to the marketplace where his friend Val runs a little hole in the wall food stall. He doesn’t want this purchase showing up on his CRI, since it might be viewed as wasteful and frivolous, so he doesn’t swipe his implant to pay. Instead he furtively pulls a couple of power cells out of his pocket, swapping them for a slice of cake. It’s illegal and risky to make an off-the-books transaction, but he trusts Val, and he wants to impress Myree.

He’ll have to come up with a story about why he rode the bus down here and back in the late evening, so he stops by a corner store to swipe his CRI and buy a gallon of milk he doesn’t really need. He hops back on the bus and makes it to his apartment building just before curfew, which is a relief; being out on the streets after that would put him in serious danger of being sentenced to reeducation. He’s winded when he makes it back to his sixteenth floor apartment, but it’s all worth it when Myree - clearly worried for him - throws open the door and hugs him.

They eat the cake on the couch together. He’s not quite forgiven yet, but it’s a start.

It’s 10:00 on Imperial Center. Yary has put Kenth to bed, and has just finished her nightly devotional at her shrine to the Emperor. Tomorrow will be the start of her weekend, and as she puts away leftovers and gets ready for bed, she ponders what to do with it. She used to take Kenth out to the neighborhood park, just to make sure he saw some green - he was born on the city-planet, and has never seen a natural landscape. Maybe she needs to file the paperwork for a vacation to Chandrila to show him. She’s a Prime Citizen, so her request would be expedited.

She’s nervous about leaving, though, and exposing the two of them to the scrutiny of strangers. It took a lot of time and effort for her to raise her Citizenship Score, and even a slight dip in it could take away all the preferential treatment she’s earned. On the other hand, if she doesn’t do it now, will she get the chance? She wonders in her heart if being “one of the good ones”, a model minority alien, will be enough to protect her forever. She remembers the history that she learned at university, back in the days of the Galactic Alliance, about empires and genocide.

She decides she’ll file the paperwork tomorrow. They can get away to Chandrila for a week or so, tour a nature park; she’ll have to keep working remotely for some of that time, but at least she has the option. In the meantime, though, she and Kenth will stay in. They can order delivery, play games, maybe work on a puzzle together - like they used to do with his dad. She’ll just have to figure out how to deflect when the inevitable question comes up. How can she tell him that his father died in the invasion? That it was stormtroopers who gunned him down?

No, it’s safer for him if he doesn’t know. Only she has to carry that weight in her heart.

It is midnight. The Empire rests.

Fear covers the Core Worlds like a suffocating blanket.

Soon, there will be a new dawn. It will bring more of the same.

There is no escape from the Imperial machine. The Emperor’s grip is absolute.