Марта Уэллс - From a Certain Point of View

Deena waited a few more moments, her back pressed against the panel behind her as the wind rose and fell. Then, satisfied that Lord Vader and Skywalker were far enough away, she followed their direction down the corridor. As she walked, she ran what parts of the conversation she had heard back through her head.

Don’t make me destroy you. Deena shook her head, trying to parse that statement. She only wished she had heard more.

But Lord Vader’s suggestion that the pair could unite and bring order to the galaxy —now that was clear enough. Deena wasn’t quite sure how to leverage that information, but she was sure somebody would be interested….

Right now, she had to refocus on the task at hand: getting out before the Imperial forces took full control.

Deena found a cargo lift that, thankfully, displayed a directory of city levels. But just as she was about to punch the control for what was listed as the Tibanna export hub, the lift was commandeered by a cadre of Ugnaughts who sent the lift to the top level. The small workers seemed to be arguing among themselves, not only ignoring Deena’s protests, but physically pushing her out of the lift ahead of them once they had reached their destination. No sooner had she exited the lift than the doors closed and it began a fast descent.

Deena sighed. She’d wasted enough time already and knew her best bet now was trying to get out with the city’s civilian population as they evacuated.

The upper levels were in total chaos, people running in every direction, carrying personal belongings and camtonos of valuables, adults carrying children, children leading the elderly by the hand. In the middle of all this, blue-uniformed city officials were doing their best to organize both themselves and the citizens. Evacuating the city was a huge operation, and Deena knew, deep in her bones, that the Empire would make short work of anyone unlucky enough to be left behind.

Deena looked down at Tig’s blaster in her hands and pushed down the feeling of nausea at the thought that, just a few hours ago, she would have been among the stormtroopers unleashing the Empire’s anger on these innocent people.

She pulled herself out of the seething crowd and took off down an empty corridor leading away from the main thoroughfare. She took a left, a right, backtracked at the sight of a squad of stormtroopers, picked another passage and ran down it. At the end of this one, she found herself in a quiet white atrium with an abstract, globelike sculpture at the center. She came to a halt and checked around. Apparently alone, she almost fell against the wall and closed her eyes, concentrating as she tried to visualize the route to the upper landing pads.

She heard them first. She opened her eyes, then darted back around the corner as a group of Imperials came out of a corridor beyond the atrium—Lord Vader, an Imperial officer, and a fireteam of stormtroopers, thankfully heading away from her position toward a door leading out onto one of the landing pads, which she’d managed to reach without even realizing.

“Alert my Star Destroyer,” said Lord Vader, as he led his entourage, “to prepare for my arrival.”

Then three more stormtroopers marched into the atrium from the other side. Deena turned and ran back the way she had come, taking a series of left turns to make sure she looped back to the landing pad.

She had to be quick—before the group disappeared.

Before she changed her mind. Because it was suicide. She knew that. Maybe it was the adrenaline, the fatigue, maybe it was the years of anger and hatred.

Maybe it was the fear. Fear that she’d made a mistake, that there was no hope.

That there was no going back.

Maybe she’d overheard something important. Maybe that intel was so incomplete as to be totally worthless.

So maybe she could do something herself that would make a difference.

Five stormtroopers. One officer. Lord Vader.

She couldn’t take them all out, but she didn’t need to. All it would take was one carefully aimed shot. She’d die under a blaze of energy bolts just a few seconds later…but not before she’d made a difference, made a contribution that would go down in history.

She came around the corner and found herself at the landing pad door. Lord Vader’s group was still in range, but only just, as they approached the shuttle docked on the pad.

Deena fell into a combat crouch. She raised the blaster. She took careful aim.

She squeezed the trigger, and nothing happened.

Deena felt her stomach do somersaults. She checked the blaster, thumbed the safety again—and found it was jammed, as Tig had said. The blaster really had been damaged in her fall from the freezer platform. In her adrenaline-fueled daze after leaving the freezing chamber, Deena had forgotten that simple, but important, fact.

Deena stood, breathing a huge sigh of…relief? Yes. Relief that she hadn’t thrown her life away for nothing. Lord Vader would never have fallen to a single blaster bolt. It would have been an empty gesture.

Deena dropped the blaster, fell to her knees, and watched the shuttle take off.

“You there! What are you doing here?”

She looked over her shoulder as a group of blue-uniformed city officers surrounded her. The one who had spoken knelt beside her, while another man dressed in gray, his bald head wrapped in a cybernetic implant, stood to one side.

The officer kneeling beside her moved his hands carefully around her shoulders. “Do you need medical assistance?”

Deena looked at him. He was frowning, but it was a look of genuine concern.

“No, I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said. She got to her feet, the officer helping her. As she stood, the bald man looked her up and down—she’d seen him in the freezing chamber earlier, he was some kind of administrator, wasn’t he?

She turned to face him.

“I want to help,” said Deena. “With the evacuation—I’m…”

She hesitated. The bald man glanced at the other officer, and Deena realized they were all watching her closely.

“I’m a qualified pilot,” Deena continued. “I can help organize an ordered evacuation.”

The lights on the bald man’s implant flashed in sequence, but still he didn’t speak.

Deena sighed. “Look, you’re going to need all the help you can get. Pretty soon there are going to be Imps crawling all over the city, and you’re not going to be able to fight them.”

Imps. Even as she said it, it felt…strange. This was the language of the Rebellion, of those she had dedicated her life to fighting.

Not anymore.

Then the bald man gave a curt nod and walked away.

“Okay,” said the other officer, “let’s go.” As one, the group moved off at a run.

Deena watched him for a moment, then, grinning to herself, followed.

It seemed that, now, she really had picked her side.

THE MAN WHO BUILT CLOUD CITYAlexander Freed

Our tale begins with one word. One word repeated twice by a very lonely man:

“Treachery! Treachery!”

The crier stood upon a marble bench, hunched like a gargoyle to brace against the wind whipping him onto his heels. Each time a gust lifted the ragged cape of his overcoat (the sleeves long gone but the yellow leather of the breast bright beneath the stains), it appeared he would topple onto the grass; but his enormous gray beard seemed to act as a counterweight, and he remained atop his perch as he made his proclamation.

“My people! Baron Administrator Calrissian has betrayed us all! The Empire is here, and I cannot thwart this invasion. You must go! Flee while you can!”

The man surveyed the plaza and—pleased to see that his people were indeed fleeing, hordes of them dressed in finery and nightclothes, carrying suitcases and small children and sentimental knickknacks—he hopped off the bench, leaving nothing behind but the odors of mint candy and sweaty armpits. “Go!” he yelled, whipping his arm about. “Your master commands it!”