***
Aaricia sits in one of the two rooms of her little house,
also called a ‘barracks’, on one of the two soft little blue couches. She reading a datapad, when she hears a very low pitchy
sound, that repeats itself every few seconds. It is like a huge animal.. like a giant rancor that is
walking.. to the depot!
The sound becomes louder and louder, she puts the datapad down on the glass-top
table, gets up and walks towards the door of her barracks. She feels a lot of
fear, but she opens the door and peers through it to outside. She gasps as she
sees an AT-AT walking towards the depot. From different
directions AT-AT’s approach, accompanied by stormtroopers and AT-ST’s.
She sees nobody else in the depot, when she shouts nobody reacts. She is
completely alone..
With shaking hands she locks the door. As if this will not protect her a bit.. but it feels better than not locking
it. They are coming to destroy the depot.. they are coming to get her.. and
she is completely alone. She hears troopers approaching her barracks, and
AT-AT’s shooting the buildings from the depot to pieces. The troopers start
shouting and shooting at the door, panicked as Aaricia feels she hides herself
under her bed, but the bed is to little to hide under.
She rolls herself like a ball and holds her breath.
Then she hears a very familiar voice screaming.
“Aariciaaaaaa!”
It is the voice of her sister.
“Aaricia! They are arresting us! Aaricia,
help!”
But what in blazes can she do? She holds her hands against her ears to stop the
sounds. This cannot be true, her family cannot be at
Azaki. But the voices don’t stop. She hears her brother crying, her mother
screaming in terror.
“Nooooooo!!”, she screams,
and jumps up from under her bed to sprint out of her house.
De depot is destroyed, they are shooting her little
house to pieces too. Everything that she had they destroy, everything that the rebels built up in this sector is being blown up to pieces.
Everything was for nothing, Aaricia falls down on her
knees and starts crying.
Two troopers grab her arms and push her on the ground. She cannot move anymore.
In a distance she still hears her family screaming her name..
but she cannot do anything. Again..
With a shock Aaricia wakes up, sweating profusely. She gets up and wipes some
sweat from her forehead. She feels miserable. She hasn’t slept well this night,
and this is another of a whole series of nightmares that she is having for a
long while already. But the last days they have become worse. She feels
powerless.. every time she
tries to get grip on things it is like it just becomes more chaotic than it was
before.
Her family was arrested because she sliced that mining installation, and half
of it accidentally blew up. A man was killed recently because she spread self
written rebel propaganda in Mos Entha.. they thought it was him that had done this. She tried to
save him, but the troopers were with too many.
She felt miserable after that day, depressed. She hated herself. And yesterday
she got herself totally drunk, crying on one of the streets of Mos Entha and.. and she just said how she felt
and what she had done. She didn’t care anymore if they would arrest her.. she didn’t care anymore about
the future.. but gladly she was able to drag herself
back to Azaki because soon enough she realized how risky this action of hers
was (also for the others!). And here she is as safe as possible.
What she did yesterday was a very stupid thing to do, but it opened her eyes in
some ways. It feels like it had to happen, because she now realizes how
unrealistic the things were that she was thinking.. and that she has a responsibility concerning Task Force
Banshee. Her commanders will be mad at her for this stupid action of yesterday,
but she doesn’t mind if she gets any punishment. She will take this
responsibility. She cannot die or fall into the hands of the Empire, because of
Task Force Banshee. She still has an important goal in her life and
responsibilities are part of this. And it is not realistic and not good for the
goal to still keep blaming herself for bad things that happened in the past
that were out of her control, she realizes this morning. Maybe last week and
yesterday she grew up a little bit more.
Feeling a lot stronger she gets up, looks through a little window to the depot
and starts preparing herself for a shower.