Buckets: A Star Wars Story

4. Bucket

All my life, I remembered seeing Star Destroyers leaving Corellia. They were great grey phantoms, arrowheads cutting through the blackness, symbols of the Empire. I had never been on one until I stepped off the shuttle onto the one destined to take us to Lothal. Governor Pryce apparently had ordered up some new weapons, and we were going to be the ones to help her test them.

You know, field tests that involved getting your bucket singed off and losing a few fingers. The fun kind.

Aurek and I had been walking down one of the corridors together, dodging mouse droids and grey-coats skittering about every which way, and he looked over at me with a grunt, "Heard they've got a wee bit of a rebel problem."

"Oh, goodie."

"They're working on all sorts of things on Lothal. Rumor has it that Pryce has called in some big guns and that we were being moved out to help. Don't know much else, though. Everyone's being pretty tight-lipped about the whole mess."

I only knew Pryce by proxy. In my years on Mimban, I had heard a little about her from officers. Just before we got shipped off, she had ordered a slaughter of a bunch of farmers at some place called Westhills. Supposed to make an example of them, or so I heard.

"Heard she's an absolute joy to work with."

Aurek laughed, "That's one way of putting it. If by "joy", you mean a "kriffing pain in the ass", then yeah, totally." He had looked over at me and shook his head as his voice dropped low through his vocoder, "The woman gives us Imperials a bad name like a decent chunk of our upper command. If I ever make a governor position, you can bet personal gain won't be on my list."

Now, I was never completely naive. I knew what was what and that officers did some questionable things, but I always believed that, however flawed most of the decisions might be, that they were at least done with some modicum of Imperial interests in mind. Scarif was a prime example of that. The one thing that never sat right with me and still doesn't was the slaughter of civvies, even if it was to make a point. We were supposed to have rules, laws, and order. Killing hundreds to send a message to a few was against that very core tenet that we had been fed our entire lives, and when I heard about Pryce ordering that, it made something in my gut sit like a stone. The idea of working for her, however brief, was distasteful.

Aurek glanced at me as we rounded a corner and sighed, "At least we've got clean clothes, right?"

That much had been true. We had clean clothes and real bunks for the first time in almost three years, and it was glorious. When we were shown our quarters, Besh had run to the fresher and started literally sobbing. He and Osk sat there in the fresher in full armor, buckets off, crying tears of pure adulation as they rubbed their worn, sopping wet gloves over their dirty faces as the clean, filtered, and purified water poured over their heads. It was pretty sad to see, but I could relate. We didn't even wait to take turns in it. We just piled in, four men in a fresher that was really only meant for two people at most.

Oh, stars, when I put it that way it sounds really questionable.

Besides the shower, I also got my first set of white armor that day. I remember getting it from the armory and staring at my reflection in the lenses of my bucket, realizing I had put on quite a few years since I landed on that mudball. I looked easily five years older than I was, but whether it was from the stress or the lack of solid and consistent rations, I couldn't say, but my cheeks looked more pronounced and I was looking remarkably like a stern-faced man I could only recall dimly as my father. Well, that, and I needed a shave. I had a full auburn beard going and if anyone saw me, it was going to be a demerit which I was not putting up with so soon after returning from the literal hell that was Mimban.