Star Wars: Before the Awakening Read Free Page A

historical battles, many from the Clone Wars, some even earlier.
    They were stormtroopers, but they weren’t quite, not yet. They were cadets, and as cadets they had additional duties aside from their training. Those duties covered everything from maintaining the armory to performing minor repairs on equipment to quite literally moving equipment from one location to another, oftenby hand but frequently with the assistance of the heavy-lifter droids, when whatever was to be moved was too big to be moved manually. They mopped the floors. They emptied the trash. They worked in the galley preparing meals.
    Free time in which to relax, simply to rest in the barracks or to read First Order–approved literature or watch First Order–approved vids, vanished. There was always somethingmore to do, somewhere else to be, another session in the simulator or more dishes to wash. There was always someone watching their performance, no matter what it was, someone to tell them that they needed to work faster, work harder, that they had to be
better
.
    It didn’t leave a lot of time to think, and FN-2187 began to wonder if that wasn’t the point.
    As grueling as their schedule had become,it was Slip who took the worst of it. He had never been the best under pressure, and his mistakes became more common. Under scrutiny, each error was magnified. Minor infractions—a broken plate when they were doing the dishes, a battery pack left on the wrong shelf in the armory, things that could’ve happened to anyone—were dealt with punitively, and
all
of them were punished, not Slip alone.
    Nines and Zeroes made no secret of their growing resentment. Even FN-2187 felt it. He could see Slip struggling, and he would think to help him, to try to ease his burden, even move to do so.
    Then he would remember Captain Phasma and would instead turn away.
    He didn’t like how that made him feel—almost like he was sick, like there was something sitting deep in his stomach that didn’t agree withhim. It didn’t help that FN-2187 couldn’t see any indication from anyone else—not from Nines, not from Zeroes—that they felt the same way. He was sure he felt it alone.
    He began to wonder if there was something wrong with him.

    There were mandatory morale sessions twice a day, when everyone was required to stop what they were doing and direct their attention to the nearest holoprojector towatch a recorded speech from High Command, most often from General Hux himself. Those would be interspersed with news feeds showing the deplorable conditions throughout the Republic: the famines on Ibaar and Adarlon, the brutal suppression of the population of Balamak, the unchecked alien advances throughout the Outer Rim. There would always be at least one story to follow about a First Order victory,the liberation of a labor camp on Iktotch or a fleet battle in the Bormea sector. Everyone would cheer, and FN-2187 noticed that Slip would cheer loudest of all, maybe because he was having such a hard time with everything else.
    For his own part, FN-2187 didn’t much care for the morale sessions, seeing them mostly as a waste of time that could be better spent in other ways. They were all FirstOrder, after all; it wasn’t like anyone could forget who they were or what they were fighting for. He would applaud when he was supposed to applaud and chant when he was supposed to chant and cheer when it was right to cheer. But his heart wasn’t in it, and he wondered if he was alone in that, too. Perhaps Nines or Zeroes felt the same way. He wanted to ask them but found he was afraid to. Whatif they didn’t? What if he really was the only one who felt that way?
    “I can’t wait to get into combat,” Zeroes said.
    They were in the mess hall, all of them rushing to clean their plates. Everything in their day was regimented, an allotted number of minutes for bathing, for dressing, for training, for eating. If you went over on time, someone would come along and take your plate