Honestly, in Low City—as the Upper City folks liked to call us, in their aristocratic way—gangs were as common as cockroaches.
Any bunch of thugs who claimed some shack for themselves called it a gang.
But there were only four major powers.
The Red Moon Pirates worked the nearby trade routes mostly, collecting tribute for safe passage and wiping out anyone who refused to pay.
Not entirely, though—they’d sometimes even help a target rebuild afterward.
At extortionate interest, naturally.
Republic law enforcement had tried to catch them a couple of times, gotten burned for their trouble, and decided to look the other way instead.
An anonymous chip loaded with a hefty sum of Hutt datari apparently convinced the head of the space patrol responsible for several nearby systems that looking away was the right call.
As did a blaster held to his mistress’s head, in his own home, at the time.
At least, that was the story that made the rounds on our grim streets.
The Chemists were the main suppliers of every hallucinogen, illegal stimulant, and other flavor of garbage on the market.
If the rumors were true, a good chunk of the rich kids up top blew entire fortunes in that group’s private clubs.
Mercenaries weren’t above buying chemical cocktails that temporarily boosted endurance, strength, and speed either.
Sometimes those drugs really did save lives—though, unsurprisingly, they were also addictive.
Drugged-up fighters made excellent meat shields, same as the mercenaries who guarded the pampered offspring of the Upper City.
Anyone who tried to raise a hand against the Chemists got wiped out without mercy.
There was also a group that had only recently formed: the Headless Jester.
More an assassins’ guild than a gang of ordinary criminals—whatever the job, they got it done.
Their rates were astronomical, but their success rate was a flat hundred percent.
Rumor had it they were even behind the death of a Jedi on some nearby planet.
A closed, secretive outfit—nobody really knew anything solid about them, though the rumors never stopped piling up.
And finally, us: the Shadow Front.
Every casino, brothel, club, and bar answered to us.
The Boss had gone through his rivals with an iron fist, absorbing or crushing them, and for ten years straight the business had only gotten stronger.
Lately there’d been more and more talk of expanding beyond the planet—nobody knew exactly where yet, but the rumors were breeding like rabbits.
All these factions maintained a fragile balance and stayed out of each other’s business.
Relative peace, relative calm, had reigned in Low City for a solid two years now.
Sure, there were smaller groups forming alliances, spinning intrigues, or folding themselves into the bigger organizations, but that was par for the course.
Walk down the streets at night, through the grim tangle of metal and concrete towers washed in bluish moonlight, and you’d find Chemists in toxic-colored armor strolling past clubs pulsing with neon madness.
Pirates with red tattoos on their faces, singing songs and hitting on drunk girls out too late.
Ordinary thugs scanning the crowd for whoever’s money they’d be spending tonight.
Shady figures ducking into alleys, glancing around furtively before they slipped inside.
Rich kids racing superbikes through the night city, or stumbling out of gambling dens having just dropped a sum that could keep three generations of ordinary Low City folk fed.
Sobs and screams from people who’d lost everything, or from those who couldn’t scrape together enough for another hit from the Chemists.
Muffled cries drifting out of dark alleys that nobody in their right mind entered alone.
Streets heaped with trash, homeless people picking through the piles.
Apartment doors bolted shut, tenants peering out warily from behind them, more than a few with the barrel of a blaster peeking over their shoulder.
There was a whole code of galactic law out there somewhere, but here, the only laws that mattered belonged to the concrete jungle—home to every kind of scum, and to plenty of people who’d just had bad luck.
Night was when the lower city showed off its full, disgusting allure.
Some of the rich even flew in from neighboring planets on purpose, just to dive into this city’s whirlpool of vice.
My home wasn’t much different from the rest of Low City.
At night it belonged to lust and vice, tangled up with gambling.
Quiet moans behind closed doors.
Girls throwing lazy, inviting looks at whichever client had caught their eye.
Mercenaries sizing up what kind of night they could afford.
The loud thump of tankards on tables downstairs, cursing tangled up with drunken vows of eternal friendship.
There, some unlucky customer was hawking his belongings to our resident pawnbroker, just to buy himself a little more time with one of the girls.
And in a dark corner, a group of sentients was whispering with a waitress.
A fragment of it reached me:
“…cards, money, two barr—”
Somehow they knew the code phrase to get into our underground casino.
Look at them—chosen, admitted into our exclusive club, where we’d strip them of every last credit.
Or maybe fortune would smile on them instead, and they’d be the lucky ones who walked out winners, ready to go tell everyone how easy it was to make money here, so more people would wander into our nets.
I ducked a drunk giant’s wild swing—my senses got sharper every year.
Working as a runner, night after night, had taught me to feel exactly where a kick or a thrown bottle was going to come from.
Sometimes, even in the middle of a full-blown brawl, I managed to walk out without a scratch.
My shift was almost over, though.
Time to head for the range.
I handed off my tray to whoever was covering for me and ducked through an unremarkable door.
It read staff only, but that wasn’t quite true.
Under every one of our establishments was a secret bunker—something only our own people knew about, and not even all of them.
Down in those underground chambers, the Boss kept part of his fighting force, trained them, drew up plans.
Nobody knew the true strength of our organization, but by my own estimate we had at least three thousand well-trained soldiers, and who knew how many other hangers-on besides.
Soldiers, exactly—the Boss’s army ran on iron discipline and absolute loyalty.
They weren’t just thugs, they were a brotherhood.
A lot of them had grown up together, and they’d die for each other without hesitation.
I headed for training.
Hand-to-hand combat, speeder riding, shooting, anything that might help you survive combat on this planet.
The younger kids were taught how to survive on the streets and how to hold their own.
Scouts kept an eye out for future commanders and the best fighters.
A few with real talent got picked up by the finance division.
Beneath Low City, an army was living and growing—one capable of crushing any enemy it faced.
My squad had fifty boys and girls in it, most of them children of gang members.
Standing over that whole racket of an army was the Old Man.
Nobody knew his real name.
Calling our boss the Boss was more of a running joke than anything—there was no such joke here.
Only the Boss knew who this man really was, or where he’d come from.
This man had shown up four years earlier and asked to speak with the Boss.
After that he’d vanished—though now I knew where he’d gone.
This whole time, he’d been down in bunkers just like this one, training fighters for our organization.
The Old Man was thin, but under his cloth wrap you could make out a lean, powerful body—nothing about it looked old.
Strong muscle and a will of steel, that’s what he was made of.
He had a prosthetic arm and leg.
Rumor had it he kept a last-resort weapon hidden in them, though nobody knew for sure.
I was late.
My squad was already huffing and groaning under the coach’s sharp watch.
Our instructor just nodded at me and kept going.
“Faster!
What is this, moving like pregnant flies?
One, one, one!”
Everyone jumped up together, then dropped back into a plank.
Nobody whined.
The weak ones had all washed out three months back, transferred to other units or just hired on as waiters and other low-level staff.
Only the most capable were left, the best of the best.
At least, that’s what we were told.
“Now push the ground away!
Thirty reps, move it, you bantha crap!
Anyone who doesn’t make it in forty seconds runs ten extra laps!”
Lucky for me, waiting tables at the brothel doubled as a decent warm-up. Get faster updates on g.com.
I dropped in and started cranking out push-ups fast.
My body felt unnaturally light, energy spreading through my limbs, making me stronger.
Thanks to the Force, apparently, and whatever it was that made me sensitive to it.
I knew now that’s exactly what it was—the Force.
The Boss had run some private tests that showed I had midi-chlorians in my blood.
I didn’t know how many, but enough to strengthen my body, sense where an attack was coming from, and sometimes even move objects.
A fair amount of money went into developing my talent.
Though, as the Boss later let slip, most of what I received had originally been meant for him.
He’d once tried to develop his own connection to the Force, but his gift was too weak.
I doubted they’d let me leave the organization now, even if I asked.
Honestly, I didn’t want to, anyway.
The sheer scale of what was possible, all the planets I could visit someday—it was both terrifying and tempting at once.
Though I figured it was too early to think that far ahead.
Right now the important thing was just to make it to fifteen.
We’d see about the rest later.
The Force rolled through my body in a wave, bringing a fresh burst of energy and letting me squeeze out a few more pull-ups.
“Seth, I see this is coming a little too easy for you.
Hey, Marcus!
Bring over a twenty-kilogram weight.
Your buddy here’s having it too easy.
Move it, you sarlacc burp!”
Old fart.
I nearly howled when they strapped weights onto my legs and waist.
But on pure stubbornness and spite alone, I managed a few more pull-ups anyway.
Running, pull-ups, one-on-one sparring, over and over and over again.
You could see it in everyone’s eyes—we were pushed to the edge, but we kept going anyway, on stubbornness, on spite, on the sheer will to get better.
I was the same way.
Those feelings seemed to give me even more strength.
Faster, stronger, better—I’m the best!
After training, while everyone else headed for the showers, I still had another half hour with a droid ball that fired weak stun blasts at me.
At first it felt like I’d seen it somewhere before.
Digging through my memory, I finally placed it—something like it from a movie.
My memory, honestly, was a strange thing.
I remembered almost nothing from my previous life—just scattered fragments, flashes of images, nothing whole.
Maybe my brain just kept dumping the old stuff because there was too much new information coming in.
I didn’t know, and to be honest, it didn’t interest me much.
I was alive, and that was what mattered.
I needed to focus on the here and now.
The constant grind of work, training, and childhood mischief was broken up by the time I spent with Mama.
Her warm hands and gentle eyes always calmed me down.
We could spend whole evenings reading to each other or playing board games.
I’m pretty sure she knew every card game in the galaxy.
She was the one who taught me to read and write, and how to add and subtract.
Sometimes she’d bring home a datapad and show me how to use it.
She never scolded me for mistakes—she’d just look at me a little sadly and tell me to try again until I got it right.
One evening, she told me all about how we’d move to another planet soon.
I’d start going to school, like a normal kid.
She’d find a real job.
We’d live in a bright apartment with flowers growing by the windows.
How she’d get to watch me grow from a boy into a man, into someone worth being proud of.
She kept talking for a while after that, but I was worn out from the long day, and I fell asleep before she finished.