From a Certain Point of View

by Seth Dickinson

  At least his parents knew a free world before it was shattered. Dak was born in chains.

  You’ve no idea what the Empire is capable of. The older Alliance pilots are always telling him this like it’s a lesson he needs to learn; as if someone has to check his boundless enthusiasm.

  But Dak knows very well what the Empire is capable of.

  Dak was born and raised in the Scargon region of Kalist VI, a penal colony in the dregs of the Deep Core where the Empire sends its political prisoners to rot. Kalist VI is a part of the criminal justice system in name only—there are no judges, juries, or courts on that rocky, barren place. On Kalist VI, there are only life sentences.

  Dak understands cruelty. He knows what the Empire does to its enemies—the ones it doesn’t obliterate from a distance. In many ways, he thinks, that instant death is kinder compared with what he’s seen Imperial guards do—not with lasers but with conventional, glinting steel—to prisoners they suspect of knowing things.

  Dak’s parents knew things.

  On Kalist VI, the guards make prisoners serve on the firing squads. They think it’s funny. They like to watch the doomed inmates begging their friends and family not to shoot, knowing full well that the firing squads have blasters aimed at their own heads.

  Dak happens to be a very good shot—uncannily good, for a gunner as young as he is. He’ll never tell a living soul why.

  * * *

  —

  Rogue Squadron is suiting up to fly out. Dak and Luke’s snowspeeder is parked in the far end of the hangar, right where they’d left it after the last time Dak took it out.

  Luke’s not there yet. He wasn’t at Princess Leia’s briefing, either. Dak shakes off a niggling sense of worry—Luke’s likely just running behind—and focuses on double-checking his controls. It’s hardly necessary. Every flip and switch is set to right where it should be. The harpoons are loaded, the guns are calibrated. All he’s missing is his pilot.

  Dak leans back in his seat, takes a deep breath, and places his hands on the triggers. The cool metal feels smooth and familiar under his skin. When he’s firing, the guns feel like an extension of his body. He doesn’t look at his hands when he’s shooting. He looks at his target. The rest is not a sequence of mechanics, but an act of will.

  Dak isn’t a Jedi. Dak can’t manipulate the Force. He can’t make objects shake without touching them and detect things his eyes can’t see like Luke can. But sometimes, when he’s pulling the trigger—when he blasts his targets with such precision it feels as if his mind is guiding his laser blasts to their destination—he wonders if this is how it feels.

  He’s always acutely aware, whenever they gear up to fly out, how stark the military asymmetry is between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire. The Imperial fleet is outfitted with thousands of sleek, state-of-the-art Star Destroyers, each carrying hundreds more TIE fighters. The rebel fleet is a hodgepodge assortment of ships of every make and build, most of them outdated, scrounged together from a combination of charity and theft.

  The fleets, seen side by side, are laughable. The disparity is so stark it’s absurd. It means that to have a shot at victory, the rebels must plan better and fly better. It means they always need sheer, dumb luck on their side.

  To Dak, it’s thrilling.

  * * *

  —

  Dak knows hopelessness. He knows the Empire as insurmountable steel walls, unbreakable shackles, and guards in helmets stationed around every corner with their fingers on their triggers. He knows it as a ubiquitous net of surveillance that makes you feel like you can’t speak, can’t breathe, can’t even think, without the Empire’s knowledge. He knows it as the source of all the screams.

  He knows how it feels to perceive the overwhelming presence of evil on a daily basis; to see its control permeate and dictate every facet of your life; for it to wear you down so thoroughly you become convinced there is no possible recourse but a pathetic attempt at continued survival; to believe that all you can hope for, all you are allowed, is to scrape by from day to day solely for the prospect of swallowing down the next ration of clumpy, gray gruel.

  Dak has seen the very worst of the Empire. He doesn’t need an education in reality. He knows the nature of their enemy.

  But to Dak, it’s outrageous enough that he’s here. That he’s still alive; that he got out of those quarries to fly with living legends across the galaxy. How much more outrageous could it be to take down the Empire?

  Kalist VI never broke him, because Dak learned early on what it meant to hope—to hope when freedom was such a distant possibility it seemed laughable; when the enemy was so overwhelmingly, soul-crushingly powerful it seemed eternal; when the only thing you had going for you was the fact that your thoughts remained free and your heart was still beating.

  As long as you’re alive, Dak has learned, you hope. As long as you haven’t yet lost, there’s still the possibility, no matter how faint, that you might win.

  The other rebels see Hoth as a miserable, barren hellhole of endless snow and howling winds. Dak looks at Echo Base, that defiant hunk of metal on a terrain where it shouldn’t exist, and sees starlight.

  * * *

  —

  Dak still can’t believe he’s Luke’s gunner—that he flies with Commander Luke Skywalker, the nobody from Tatooine turned hero of the Rebellion; the floppy-haired farmboy who turned up out of nowhere, rescued the princess, and proceeded to obliterate the Death Star.

  To Dak, he’s the hope of the rebellion incarnate. Princess Leia is courage and perseverance against tragedy; General Rieekan is weary, experienced competence. But in Luke, Dak finds faith in the impossible.

  “Heard a lot about you,” Luke said with a grin when they were introduced on Hoth, pilot-to-gunner, two of the newly formed Rogue Squadron’s best. “Heard you’re a great shot.”

  “I do my best.” Dak grins back. “I won’t let you down, sir.”

  * * *

  —

  Being assigned as Luke’s gunner is an honor Dak doesn’t take lightly. He’s worked hard to live up to the job—since they started flying together, they’ve been the best pilot–gunner pair in Rogue Squadron by far. They decimate simulation exercises like they’re telepathically linked not just to each other but to the machines themselves. Luke maneuvers them through flight patterns that snowspeeders weren’t designed to take, and Dak manages long-distance shots that technically, physically, shouldn’t be possible.

  Luke has never doubted Dak. He’s never asked why he didn’t take a shot when he could have; never criticized him for waiting a few seconds to get a better lock on a crucial target that they could have taken from a distance. Luke trusts Dak to keep them safe, and so does Dak—he’s never doubted Commander Skywalker for a second, not even that time on their lone snowspeeder test flight when Luke took them on hairpin twists that brought Dak’s breakfast roiling in the back of his throat, or when they skimmed so close over icy peaks that Dak could have sworn paint was chipping off the snowspeeder’s belly.

  They’ve only been flying together for a few weeks, but Dak feels like they’ve been flying together for a lifetime.

  The night that Luke didn’t report back, the night he stayed out to check out a meteorite, Dak couldn’t sleep. When Han Solo brought him back, barely kicking but alive, Dak went weak-kneed with relief.

  But, he tells himself, he was never really worried. Luke’s got the Force. Luke would never let him down.

  * * *

  —

  They’ve gotten one transport out. The rebels have temporarily disabled a Star Destroyer with an ion cannon that the Empire doesn’t know they have, freeing space for one ship carrying some of the rebels stationed on Hoth to flee into hyperspace. There’s cheering throughout the hangar, but the celebration is brief—the Imperial assault has barely started, and there are still twenty-nine transports grounded
on Hoth.

  They won the opening salvos. Now the real battle begins.

  Dak’s seated in his snowspeeder, and he’s just starting to get antsy when he spots a figure in orange darting in his direction. He feels a small wave of relief—he’d gotten word that Luke had recovered from his night out in the snow, but he hasn’t seen him in person until now.

  “Feeling all right, sir?”

  “Just like new, Dak,” Luke says. “How about you?”

  Luke can’t see him, but Dak beams. “Right now I feel like I could take on the whole Empire myself.”

  Luke gives a low chuckle. “I know what you mean.”

  Dak grins and yanks the cockpit roof down over their heads.

  * * *

  —

  “Echo Station Five-Seven,” Luke says over the comm. “We’re on our way.”

  Rogue Squadron is racing over the snow, smoothly dodging laserfire from Imperial walkers like it’s child’s play.

  “All right, boys,” Luke says calmly, as if they’re not skirting through air thick with energy blasts that could decimate their engines in a split second. “Keep in tight now.”

  Everyone in Rogue Squadron knows what that means—he’s going in for the kill.

  “Luke, I have no approach vector,” Dak urges. He can’t see how he’s supposed to fire from this angle—he’s nowhere close to the walker’s weak spots. “I’m not set.”

  “Steady, Dak. Attack pattern delta.” Luke’s speaking so casually, he could be telling them what he wants for lunch. “Go now!”

  So Dak throws his reservations to the wind and clutches the triggers, waiting for his shot.

  Even though they’re arcing through the air at a perpendicular angle that makes his stomach roil, and even though they’re darting so close to the walker Dak could swear they nicked its leg, Dak doesn’t doubt for one second that Luke’s guiding them to exactly where they need to be.

  If Luke’s in the cockpit, then they’re immortal.

  Dak’s flying with a Jedi. He’s flying with someone who navigates not just with his eyes but with the Force; who dodged death a dozen times over during the Battle of Yavin because he could perceive everything around him even without the automatic navigator; even with his eyes closed.

  So Dak doesn’t feel a sliver of fear. Not when the engine of the snowspeeder at their right bursts into fire. Not when Luke realizes the walker’s armor is too strong for lasers to penetrate, which means they’ll have to get in terrifyingly close to wrap harpoon cords around their legs.

  Imperial blasts fill the air around them, but there’s no way, Dak thinks—no way they’ll ever land.

  * * *

  —

  It happens so quickly Dak doesn’t have time to hurt.

  There’s a split second when he’s not focused on the walker—he’s distracted by a sudden malfunction in fire control, and then he’s scrambling for the tow cable release because there’s no time to worry about the malfunction—then there’s a flash of bright light, a noise like a firecracker, and a searing, astonishing heat.

  Oh, he thinks, stunned more than anything, and then a little bewildered that he can’t move his hands. He blinks, but his eyes won’t clear. He can’t see the walkers—just a haze of white, and pulsing red clouds in the middle.

  “Dak?”

  He hears Luke’s voice but it’s muffled, as if Luke is yelling through a wall. Dak’s fingers have gone numb. Black keeps creeping into the edges of his vision. He feels like he’s falling backward through a tunnel, away from his body.

  He struggles to come back to himself—he needs to get his hands on the controls, needs to release that tow cable, needs to shoot something, because Luke’s counting on him, Luke needs him to—

  “Dak!”

  He can’t.

  He can’t feel his hands. He can’t feel anything. I’ve been hit, he realizes belatedly. That was a hit just now. I’m hit.

  It’s too late. Luke’s not getting him out of this.

  He couldn’t save you, whispers a little voice, but it’s immediately crowded out by a more urgent panic—this can’t be the end, he can’t—he’s let Luke down, he’s let the Alliance down, he must fire that tow cable, he must—

  He can’t.

  “Rogue Three,” he hears Luke say. “Wedge, I’ve lost my gunner. You’ll have to make this shot.”

  Luke says something else, but it’s all fuzz to Dak now; his hearing is fading with his sight.

  Dak fights like hell against the dark, but his body’s too far gone. Dak doesn’t even know where he’s been hit. His wounds are so severe there is no singular point of agony. Instead it’s a shroud, a total numbness that pulls him further and further into the looming dark. And Dak is trying to lift his head, to move his hands, but he can’t, he can’t, he can’t—

  Somewhere, as if from a very great distance, he hears a great crash. He feels the speeder twist around, arcing back through the air. Seconds later there’s a great explosion; a series of booms that rattles the speeder and vibrates through his bones.

  That had to be the walker.

  The harpoon, he realizes. They did it. They’ve downed an Imperial walker with nothing but a cable.

  Incredible.

  He feels the speeder twisting around again, darting back for another shot.

  That’s when he knows, with as much certainty as he’s ever known anything—they’ve got this. They don’t need him. He’s just one soldier. But Luke, Wedge, and Janson; the rest of Rogue Squadron, the rest of the Rebel Alliance—they’ll finish the job.

  He doesn’t have to fight anymore.

  He can let go.

  Calm sweeps across him. Suddenly the numb isn’t so bad. The panic’s gone. Nothing hurts.

  It’s all right, he thinks. It’s all right.

  He’s falling through the tunnel; he’s left his body and the speeder behind.

  He’s left Luke behind.

  But Luke’s going to be fine. The rebels will get off Hoth. They’ll escape the Imperial fleet; they’ll find another hideout and build another base. And if that base is attacked, they’ll escape again—they always do—and start again somewhere else. Over and over, until one day they get in another lucky shot.

  The Rebellion will survive him. It’ll beat the odds like Luke once beat the odds; like Dak once beat the odds.

  Soldiers die all the time. It’s the occupational hazard of rebellion, the obvious likelihood of demise.

  But that’s the funny thing about hope, Dak’s learned—you only have to get lucky once.

  BEYOND HOPE

  Michael Moreci

  Crimson particle bolts screamed through the air just over Private Emon Kref’s head; the enemy fire found its home in the turret at Emon’s back. Shards of metal, charred and scored black, rained down on Emon’s and his squad’s heads, reminding them just how feeble they were in the face of the Empire’s AT-AT walkers.

  And the Battle of Hoth had only just begun.

  * * *

  —

  Emon took cover behind the trench’s frozen wall and shook the bits of turret debris off his goggles.

  “Still glad you joined the Alliance?” Andry Ked yelled. He and Emon were shoulder to shoulder, huddled against each other just as much as they were huddled against the wall. More crimson bolts sizzled overhead; explosions echoed and reverberated up and down the trench until it sounded like one big eruption.

  “I was never glad!” Emon shouted back. Which, in a way, was true. It’d been a few short weeks since the Empire scorched Koshaga, ending a war that’d been waged on Emon’s homeworld for as long as anyone could remember. Emon had been born into that war; his father was a general in the Koshagan People’s Movement; he’d battled arm in arm with his own people against the tyranny of the ruling class and those who supported it
. That fight was Emon’s life.

  But then the Empire came.

  In one single, swift operation, the war was over. The Empire swarmed Koshaga, and with its machines of death and its phalanx of stormtroopers, it smothered the planet’s Lowlands. Lines of defense were shattered; leaders—Emon’s father included—were taken prisoner. The will of the Koshagan people, once so strong and so proud, withered before Emon’s eyes.

  A week later, a rebel recruiter who’d gotten wind of the Koshagan uprising quietly arrived on Emon’s home planet. When the recruiter’s ship left a day later, Emon was on it, a full-fledged member of the Rebel Alliance. Still in a state of grief and shock, he couldn’t conceive how anyone could topple the Empire. But war was all Emon knew, and the Rebellion was offering him just that. So he took the secret transport off Koshaga and, in no time at all, Emon was given a uniform and a blaster. The officer aboard his transport told him that they were going to win back the galaxy, one system at a time.

  “Whatever you say,” Emon had replied.

  Andry, who was in his early forties and thus a senior citizen among the grunts, poked Emon in his ribs, snapping him out of his reverie. “Come on, you’re going to need more enthusiasm than that, Kref!” he yelled in his gruff voice. “Rebellions are built on hope—hasn’t anyone told you that?”

  Emon groaned. “No, Andry, you’re the first,” he yelled back, certain to convey his sarcasm. “When we get out of this trench—if we get out of this trench—you’ll have to tell me more!”

  Andry laughed. “You’ll get it—one day, kid. You’ll get it.”

  Overhead, a squad of snowspeeders howled past the trench, racing toward the walkers. Emon breathed a sigh of relief. Good, he thought. At least that’ll distract those damn things.