30.1.1034
Lorrd City, Lorrd, Kanz Sector

The last three days have been something like a bad dream that doesn't end when I wake up, it just gets worse. I'd rather be asleep and dreaming, but here I am awake in the dead of night, not that day time brings any light down here, because it's my turn to keep watch. Not that I could sleep anymore anyway, not with my stomach feeling like it's trying to wrap itself around my spine.

It wasn't the Arguzdan terrorists that caused our mag train to short out of power. It's worse. Much worse. The Mandalorians are on Lorrd. The best anyone can figure is that they attacked Lorrd City's main power plants first thing when they arrived. In the last three days, only two people have managed to get comm calls out, and the news was all bad. The Premier Palace was vaporized from orbit, leaving one giant puddle in the middle of the capital, and the Mandalorians with their war droids pounded all the major air fields into icy rubble.

At first, no one could imagine why the Mandalorians would come here. Lorrd is hardly a strategic planet on any trade routes and it's not known for being a world of warriors to challenge the Mandalorians. Then Marno, a Lorridian man who has kind of headed up our little group since the attack, said that they might be after Lorrd's shield production facilities, like where he works. Lorrd produces some of the best shielding technology on the outer rim, thanks its harsh habitat. That, and the rare metal mines.

Marno was really the first person to make any sense of the situation when our train stopped. After sitting in the dark, waiting for more instructions from the train conductor and getting none, for almost three hours, someone in our car finally got a comm call through. That was when we knew it was the Mandalorians. We were sitting near that lady when she made the call, and so was Marno. He talked her down and wouldn't let her panic. Us either. He didn't even let her tell the rest of the car what she'd heard. He just told everyone that we needed to get out. People were scared, but somehow he managed to keep everyone calm, giving everyone a job or something to watch for.

We pried open the side doors and all jumped out onto the tracks. Some people still in other cars of the train watched us squeeze by shaking their heads. They didn't know, and we kept going anyway. Marno said a big group would be even more dangerous, we just had to get ourselves out.

I'm not sure how long we walked, but we hadn't made it to the next station when we heard people coming. I thought for a second that maybe they were coming to rescue us, but there were no voices, and the foot falls were in too careful of unison. You could hear the clatter of armor and weapons echoing down the subway tunnel. Luckily, we had just passed a maintenance passage, so we all turned around and got inside that crowded passage as quick as we could. I think we were just barely all inside when the lights of their head lamps came around the bend. I was hardly breathing I was so scared. Had they heard us run away? We weren't exactly quiet. I watched them march by through the grate in the wall I was shoved up against.

No one said anything after that for more than an hour, I'm sure. A while later, I could hear something that sounded like shots back down the tunnel where we came from. Screams too, but that might have just been my over-active imagination. I felt sick. I wanted to throw up. We could have warned those people and told them to run. We could have helped them, but now they're either dead or captured. I'm sure everyone else heard it too, but no one said anything. No one has said anything about it, not in the last three days. Nobody wants to. Sometimes the injustice of it all just makes me want to scream, but I can't. I'm too afraid, to hungry, too exhausted.

Maintenance tunnels like the one we were hiding in usually lead up to the surface or at least to another tunnel. This one kid who can't have been much older than me, I think his name is Tarrin, volunteered to follow the tunnel up to its end. He came back less than an hour later saying that he could hear the Mandos on the other side of the exit, wherever it led. We were stuck.

I think we spent the night in that crowded piece of tunnel. I guess we could have spread out more, but no one wanted to stray far. Once everyone was awake the next morning, we all agreed in whispers to keep moving. There had to be another way out. But every maintenance shaft we passed was either blocked by rubble at the top or clearly would take us out into danger, so we kept walking in the dark. We always had to pass through the stations really carefully, in ones and twos. I don't know where the Mandos get so many soldiers, but there seemed to be one or two occupying every station. We must not be the only ones trying to use the subways as an underground road if they're watching it so carefully.

All this sneaking around, not saying a word, being so careful so that you don't even breathe too loud, the stress is wearing me thin. I haven't eaten since that first night. No one has, so I can't complain, but that doesn't make it any easier. I feel like I'm sitting on pins here, just waiting for the Mandalorians to stop ignoring us, show up, and put a blaster to my head. I want to cry or to throw up, but I can't. Veea has hardly said three words together since we got stuck down here, and that's not helping either. I just keep thinking about how we're only four more stations away from the Relems' house, MT-412, and the Viridian with its cargo hold still half full of food. I need something familiar. I need to get back to my ship or I may just fall apart down here. I am so glad someone like Marno is taking charge. When he talks and gets us going every morning, I start to think that it might not be so bad after all.

The problem now is that we really are stuck. We're just outside North Central Station, the main exchange point for all of the northern suburb lines, and it's crawling with Mandos. Tarrin ran up ahead a few hours to check it out and came back with that terrible news. There doesn't seem to be any way to get past. So, we're holed up in another dead-end maintenance shaft, waiting for something to change. I think we're resting hiding a lot more now than we did at first. Everyone is getting hungrier and weaker. No one complained when Marno called for an early stop today. I think some people are starting to give up. How can we get past North Central Station? Marno promises to go out first thing tomorrow morning to see if he can find some way around, or some gap in the Mandalorian guards' watches that can let us slip by. He sounds way more optimistic than I think he feels. I saw that look in his eyes.

Dad and everyone else must be worried sick. I want to tell them all that I'm alright now, even if I don't know how we'll ever get out of here. The Mandalorians can't stay forever. Eventually they'll have everything they want from Lorrd and they'll leave. We just have to keep from getting ourselves caught or starving to death before then.

Why Lorrd? Why now? I want to go home to my ship. I want my family.