There comes a point in a man’s life where a singular cause comes to encompass his entire perspective on life. In the wake of this paradigm shift, every issue and conflict comes to be weighed anew. For myself, who grew up a slave on the outer rim, I taught from a young age by master and fellow slave alike that this is simply the way of things.
But the twin hearts of a Zabrak cannot be shackled forever.
For years I toiled in silent subservience to my masters, my people’s physiology lending itself well to managing droids in mining operations and other even more hostile environments. But that same hardiness, I believe, gives us a strength of spirit that cannot be whipped into submission forever.
No cage is perfect, not for one with the courage to dream of a better life, and the ambition to seize it when the opportunity presents itself. It is by placing your own freedom over the lives of your captors, and even over the lives of the cowards that would not join you, that one’s dream can be realized.
I do not grieve for my former fellows, who I buried along with the taskmasters under so many tons of rock. I do not feel shame for the guards we knocked out, then threw out airlocks. Nor do I feel the least iota of guilt for the freighter pilot we left to drift in space without a hyperdrive.
All I feel is elation at my newfound freedom, to do as I wish, when I wish, where I wish. No one will take this from me ever again.
Our escape pods were picked up by the tractor beams of CZ-220. My fellow slaves and I all went our separate ways, some of them speaking of trying to hunt down their old families and return to happier times before the dark shafts of the mines and cruel whips and shock collars of the overseers. Others just wanted to go into hiding, fearing retribution.
Myself?
I’ve seen how tenuous the hold of the Masters really is, how they bleed, beg and die just the same as any Slave.
So I’ll break a few more chains, and the hands that control them. That sounds fun.