“Tip, hurry up!”
Tip was awakened by the sound of his fellow miners shuffling around in the bunk room. Some were crawling out of bed, while others were hydrating their cracking, dry skin with a brief saltwater shower, and a couple of the old timers were already fully clothed and tying their bootstrings. The Ishi Tib on the bunk above Tip handed something down to him, and Tip was forced to furiously wipe the sleep from his eyes before he could clearly see what he had been given.
“There was another attack last night. They say the capital may have fallen into the rebellion’s hands.”
Tip looked at the headline of a news report on his compatriot’s holopad. The following article was accompanied by a video of the smouldering aftermath of a bombing and a street lined with what were most likely dead Ishi Tib and Imperial Storm Troopers. He never thought the fighting would make it to Tibrin’s capital of Logos.
“Would you turn that garbage off,” one of the older miners said as he threw on his overcoat, “I’ve stomached about as much as I can take. Those terrorists kill dozens of our own people, and you sit there with a smile on your beak? Your generation disappoints me.”
“Whatever you say, pops,” the younger Ishi Tib above Tip retorted before continuing to point out parts of the article that excited him.
“They say the rebels have set up a command center in the reefs. Since we’re on some of the only solid ground near the capital, do you think they’ll be coming for us next?”
Tip sat upright and began unzipping his nighttime jumpsuit, peeling it down from around his body. His skin was starting to severely crust over, and he knew he needed to douse himself in saltwater as soon as possible.
“I can’t really say,” Tip finally told the young miner and he scratched at the cracking skin on his arm,” if they want metals for ships and whatnot, then they’ll definitely want to head this way. But I suppose we’ll just have to talk to the offworld pilots at the tavern tonight to see if they have any other updates about how the rebellion is faring on other worlds. If the Rebels don’t get some backup soon, or especially if they keep deploying all of their fighters to one location, it’ll be pretty easy for the Empire to snuff them all out with an air strike from a Star Destroyer.”
Most of Tibrin was covered in a dense, oceanic biome, with most of the major cities both sitting atop and made out of the planet’s vast coral reefs. This made the ocean and coral dwelling Ishi Tib incredibly wealthy, while those who remained in the sandy dune areas were forced to supply the upper class with any materials that the oceanic cities could not naturally produce. Unfortunately, it also made both the coral cities and the mines the perfect targets for rebel raids.
In all honesty, Tip didn’t really care too much about the fighting in the cities. They were fought by a bunch of entitled citizens who simply wanted more freedoms than they already possessed, and a handful of offworlders who didn’t truly understand Tibrin’s plights. If they really fought for freedom as much as they said they did, the least the rebels could do would be to send humanitarian aid to their brothers and sisters who worked night and day in the mines to help make sure their cities remained in relative order and stability.
This didn’t mean that Tip liked the Empire much either. The Ishi Tib had known nothing but occupation for the past hundred years, First by the Republic, then by the Separatists during the Clone Wars, and now by the Galactic Empire that many saw as the most tyrannical.
They were the ones that made the living conditions the worst they’d ever been, and started implementing stricter punishments for the workers’ failures and mistakes.
Fortunately, when the fighting had started in the major metropolitan areas, most of the Imperial forces had been drawn away from the mines, allowing for less enforcement and more flexibility.
Unfortunately, in their wake, they left behind Imperial Lieutenant Luffman to supervise the mines, one of the hardest, strictest men Tip had ever had the displeasure of knowing. He and his gang of Imperial Ishi Tib loyalists made sure that the miners stayed busy and met most of the nearly impossible quotas set before them.
Tip made his way down the metal suspension bridge as he passed by a few of his fellow pilots who had just finished their twenty hour their shift.
“Everything going alright down there?” he asked them as they passed each other. One of them laughed and slung his helmet over his shoulder, “it was pretty uneventful until that rebel attack at the capital. Now the Lieutenant is fuming. You best watch yourself.”
Tip took a deep breath, really not wanting to deal with the Imperial officer today.
He took pride in his ability to quickly study and analyze people based off of a single glance. He had practiced all his life, and he could now look into someone’s eyes and discern their general emotion with near perfect accuracy. And Lieutenant Luffman always seemed to be feeling but one emotion: anger.
Tip had met a lot of different characters in his days as a miner, but none had scared him to his core quite like the Lieutenant. It wasn’t even because of what he did, but from what Tip knew he had the potential to do. And that’s why he always tried to avoid the officer, or at the very least, stay on his good side.
This is also why Tip never talked about anything regarding the outside world while on duty. And why he absolutely never mentioned anything about the rebellion. The Lieutenant’s watchdogs were everywhere, and any attempt or even hint at a revolt was met with zero tolerance.
Tip walked up to the crowd of pilots who were gathered outside of the hauler docks, a large metal platformed suspended half way down an enourmous crevice jutting deep into Tibrin’s surface.
Tip could hear the familiar sound of water rushing in the seemingly bottomless chasm deep below, and he saw the massive system of conveyor belts loading ore from the unseen caverns into the hauler he would soon he boarding.
Luffman was furiously addressing the pilots, and he angrily eyed Tip who, while being the last miner to arrive, was still five minutes early to his shift. The only part of the rant he actually caught was that they would be forced to meet a new quota starting today. One that required two more trips to and fro than usual.
Tip sighed as the group dispersed and the Lieutenant boarded the elevator that would take him up to his personal residence on the cliff overlooking the crevice. Due to last night’s attack, Tip was actually surprised that the only punishment they were really receiving was two extra trips.
Still, he already had his route and routine practiced down to a science, so adjusting it to accommodate an extra two trips would be a stretch. Fortunately, there was a reason he was known by many as the best pilot on Tibrin, and he took this not really as a punishment, but as a challenge.
Tip stepped down into the hauler’s cockpit and donned his large helmet, attaching the twin oxygen tubes from his flight suit to the helmet to allow him to remain conscious at the high speeds he was about to be traveling at.
A team of four other miners climbed aboard the hauler as well. This was a precaution the Lieutenant had implemented to make sure the ore remained safe, and to expedite the offloading process once they reached the processing facilities at site B.
Unfortunately, this new protocol took four strong men away from their mining efforts here at site A, which rendered the planned efficiency effectively moot.
But Tip was not here to argue. He was just her to do, and he did with great efficiency.
The day went by smoothly, and Tip was able to accommodate the extra trips fairly easily. It was at the expense of his passengers, however, as they were thrown around at a sickening pace due to the intense speeds Tip had to maintain, and often times crawled out of the skimmer-hauler wiping their regurgitated ration packs from their work attire.
This was the only way it could work out, however, as breaking the surface of the crevice was forbidden by the Lieutenant. He deemed it an indication of escape or revolt, just like so many other actions that made their job unnecessarily inefficient.
This had forced Tip to learn how to fly in the valleys and crevices from a young age, dodging in and out of narrow passage ways and around rocks jutting up from the unseen surface far below.
The only force that drove him to these extremes anymore was the dream, which he would often find himself drifting off into as he instinctively navigated the ships between jagged outshoots and narrow turns. He always daydreamed of flying above the surface, out where he could see the planet’s vast landscapes. But in reality he was not offered that liberty.
Still, the job was done. And Tip was famished. At the ten hour mark, he and his crew had been able to disembark to grab a small meal, however, it was always just enough to sustain them and nothing more. Now was finally the time for a hearty meal before he headed to bed and the cycle began all over again.
Star Wars Fan Publications 