The war in the galaxy was picking up speed.
Year two of the fighting, and it was picking up all across the galaxy.
Heroes — General Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka Tano — pulling off some feat almost daily.
The Separatists’ terrifying cyborg general, Grievous, slaughtering Jedi without mercy.
Legions of metal soldiers against men grown in test tubes.
It all seemed impossibly far away from us.
Down in the lower city, life hadn’t changed — stable and miserable, same as always.
Nobody believed this war would ever touch us.
Who needed some third-rate planet out in the Outer Rim?
But before we knew it, the war had found its way even to our forgotten little corner of the galaxy.
Heads craned back, we watched Separatist ships appear over our orbit, one after another.
Four of them poured transports crammed with metal soldiers out of their bellies, one after the next.
Our government didn’t even put up a fight — just surrendered without firing a shot.
On the streets, people whispered that the Separatists had simply bought our leaders off, cold hard cash.
But even that talk died out fast.
The streets, once packed with vagrants and criminals, went empty.
Droids flooded every street.
The metallic clatter of marching feet never let up, echoing through the whole city.
Defensive positions went up.
Whole neighborhoods got thrown out of their own homes so fortresses could be built where their houses used to stand.
And it wasn’t some isolated case — the entire lower city was in an uproar.
The metal soldiers herded sentients onto massive construction sites and worked them as free labor.
When one died, they just put another in his place.
Low City died.
Columns of droids marched through empty streets, and nothing else moved.
The residents had scattered wherever they could.
Only at night, under cover of dark, could anyone go outside at all.
That was when the couriers moved with their packages, when the gang soldiers moved, when the call girls made their rounds.
But there were so few of them left that almost nobody noticed.
Some people decided to fight back.
They shot down a few droids and stripped them for parts.
The punishment came the very next morning.
Several dozen residents got dragged out to the square and executed.
It was broadcast across every planetary channel.
After that, the people rose up.
Underground cells started forming, droids got destroyed, and the rebels took their weapons.
But all of it stopped fast.
Losing patience, the Separatist commander called an orbital strike down on Low City.
I’m sure the Upper City thanked him for the demonstration cleanup.
The craters left behind held a few thousand deaths apiece.
After that, there were no more warnings out of the residents, no more threats.
Everyone knew exactly what would happen if the Republic’s troops ever showed up. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Revenge, and the wish to be rid of the fat, well-fed bastards up top — that was the mood ruling the lower city now.
No doubt at the Upper City leadership’s urging, droids started breaking into homes, dragging people out, shooting them in the street.
And no one could fight back.
Everyone was afraid, and knowing they were afraid only made people angrier.
That rage started spilling onto the rich.
One night, someone killed a few young elites by tossing a grenade into their transport.
A few days later, unknown attackers blew up a security checkpoint and stormed into the Upper City, robbing and killing as they went.
Aggression met with even greater aggression.
Every building within two hundred meters of the Upper City’s walls got demolished.
Private police units were ordered to shoot anyone who crossed the line.
And that line kept pushing further into Low City with every day that passed.
The conflict between the two cities had been building for a long time.
Now it had hit its peak.
When the familiar triangular shapes of Republic Venators — the ones everyone recognized from the holovids — showed up in orbit, and clones started landing on the planet, the people rose up.
An unstoppable wave of bandits and ordinary people alike swept the tin cans and the police out of their positions, clearing a beachhead for the clone transports.
The pirates landed a coordinated strike against the Separatist ships.
The war had begun.
Skirmishes that used to be local started swelling into something far bigger.
Whole districts turned into battlefields.
Fighting broke out across the entire city, constantly claiming sentient lives.
Pain, fear, and rage flooded the city.
And I felt just fine.
Some stretches I went days without sleep, and I made it into plenty of clashes, wiping out people and droids both.
Other times I had to force myself to sleep just so my body could hold together.
My mind, clouded by the Darkness and the hunger for battle, howled with delight.
I finally had somewhere to pour everything that was building up inside me.
One day, looking in a mirror, I saw bright yellow eyes ringed with red from burst capillaries.
Black shadows had settled into my eye sockets, making the glowing irises stand out even more.
My skin had gone pale and sickly, like I’d just crawled out of a grave.
My once-cute kid’s face had sharpened into something repulsive.
Sunken cheeks and a feverish stare didn’t do me any favors.
Seeing myself, I was horrified.
Was that really my face, staring back at me?
Trying to shake off the sight, I grabbed the mask and pulled it on as fast as I could — by then it had become my second skin.
Only in it did I feel like myself again.
After that, I never took it off.
Not even to sleep.
The smooth metal surface, the red lenses over the eyes, the predatory slash of a mouth — it became my second face, and one I had no interest in parting with.
The rhythmic, mask-muffled sound of my own breathing calmed me and let me fall asleep no matter what was going on around me.
My whole world had turned red.
Fitting, given my mood.
I wandered the whole city like a ghost, hunting for a fight.
Every so often I had to head back to base to restock supplies, hand over the most valuable trophies, and pick up new pistols, since the old ones would melt down from overuse.
I was always met with dark looks, or just ignored outright.
Since the war started, I’d only taken part in two operations alongside the others. Find the original chapter at g.com.
The rest of the time I was left to myself.
Nobody even tried pulling me into the group raids anymore.
The gap between me and the rest of the Shadow Front kept getting wider.
That suited me fine, though.
Wandering the ruined city between fights, exploring it, was interesting.
Far more interesting than sitting around listening to filthy jokes or watching people gamble.
With the fighting never letting up, the city was turning to rubble fast.
Where houses used to stand, there were now heaps of concrete and twisted metal beams.
Constant explosions and gunfire had become the background noise of daily life.
Heavy weapons on both sides left no chance of any quick rebuilding.
At first, everyone assumed that together we’d wipe out the droids in a matter of days.
Reality had other plans.
I don’t know why our planet mattered so much, but Separatist command held onto it hard.
Just when victory seemed within reach, an enemy armada arrived.
Seven Munificent-class star frigates and one Lucrehulk-class Battleship encircled our planet.
The fresh wave of droid forces nearly wiped out the clones, who were forced to fall back into the forests, taking part of the rebels with them.
Now the fighting covered the whole planet.
Where before almost every battle had been fought inside Low City, the entire planet had turned into a battlefield.
Even I found it dangerous to stick my head out into the streets too often now.
I could take out ten B1 battle droids with well-placed shots, but the patrols now ran several dozen of the things deep.
Taking on that kind of force alone was suicide.
I ended up holed up in the catacombs with the main body of the Shadow Front.
That went on until fresh Republic troops arrived.
Then the war entered a new phase.
Both sides were nearly even.
Attempts at a breakthrough came here and there, but every single one of them failed.
The clones started feeding us intel — enemy supply depots, fortresses set up in the city that could be seized.
At first, everyone was skeptical about working so closely with the troops.
You do your thing, we’ll do ours.
But the very first raid on a depot changed everyone’s mind.
What we found in there alone could have covered half our group’s income.
After that, everyone was waiting on the next raid.
A fierce rivalry sprang up among the gangs over contracts like that from Republic command.
There was no end to the war in sight, no edge to it anywhere.
Both sides kept pouring in fresh forces.
Neither one wanted to give up this planet, which for some reason mattered to everyone — everyone except the people who actually lived here.
A few months into the Separatist occupation, most of the city’s population had either fled into the forests or left the planet entirely.
Only a handful of rebels and the bigger criminal gangs were still willing to defend their home.
Some out of patriotism.
Others out of pure self-interest.
And I just enjoyed all of it, and tried not to die in the process.