Марта Уэллс: From a Certain Point of View

Chase likes the way words fit in Jordan’s mouth, like they’re round with delight, his deep accent making ordinary words sparkle with Jordan’s quick-witted amusement. These moments with Jordan are always the best part of his day.

Jordan leans forward, placing his hands on Chase’s shoulders, rubbing them with his palms. “You cold, Yavin baby?”

“N-no. Yes. I told you, I’m from Takodana! I mean. Cold. Uh, not anymore. I—”

Be open to possibility. Others won’t know how you feel unless you tell them. Your most confident self is waiting for you to open the door.

Chase opens his mouth, and then closes it.

“I gotta go,” Chase mutters, stumbling backward and grabbing his crate. He breaks into a quick jog. He’s not running away from his crush. He’s not. He’s just…getting back to work.

—

Chase’s breath billows in front of him in quick puffs as he leaves the tauntaun pens with the crate. Ugh, why didn’t he stay? Was that flirting? Maybe he should have said something witty or suave. “I’m from Takodana!” Chase mutters to himself. Un-kriffing-believable.

Ugh. Hoth. He hates it so much.

Where was he going again?

Right, main hangar.

Chase makes a quick right into one of the main tunnels; other personnel walk quickly through, and the sounds of the command room echo through the wider corridor. Ahead of him are familiar voices.

“You want me to stay because of the way you feel about me!”

Chase can see Captain Solo striding ahead of Princess Leia Organa as she quickens her pace to match his. “Yes, you’re a great help, a natural leader—”

Oh, not this again. Chase has seen them pretend to argue all over the base; in the mess halls, in corridors, in the hangar. Not that the argument against fickleberries baked on meatpies was without merit—Chase is clearly for combining savory and sweet and loves that Alderaanian custom—but honestly, to drag it out for an hour just to annoy the other person is too much. And now they’re in his way. Can’t they flirt somewhere else? He’s got a job to do.

Captain Solo leans closer, and every centimeter of his handsome face annoys Chase to no end. Some people can’t just sweep into the Rebellion with their own ship and accept actual critical missions from General Rieekan and banter with the princess all over Echo Base. Some people aren’t handsome and don’t have a presence like Han Solo. Some people are just ordinary people, okay?

Chase grips his crate tighter and steps right into the scant space between them and ignores the rising argument behind him.

“You could use a good kiss!” Captain Solo bellows. It echoes throughout the corridor.

The absolute nerve.

Chase bristles, his knuckles turning white as he picks up the pace. He’s so tired of people like Solo. You know who’s never been kissed? Chase Wilsorr, that’s who. He could certainly use a good kiss. It offends him that Captain Solo and Princess Leia are just arguing about it, the way they’ve been dancing around each other since they’ve arrived on Hoth, clearly pretending to hate each other. Don’t attractive people have anything better to do than to taunt everyone else on the base with their unresolved tension?

—

Chase is startled out of his normal kitchen duty the next day by a booming voice over the base’s central communications system. “This is General Rieekan initiating the evacuation sequence. Imperial forces are approaching. All personnel must report to transport ships in the main hangar. Pilots, report to your X-wings…”

“Evacuation sequence!” Chase mutters. There had been a strange tension in the command center during his caf run yesterday, and then an increase in weapons distributions to the sentries. Chase always knew evacuation was a possibility, but he never thought it would come to this so quickly.

“We were trained to be able to go at a moment’s notice,” Harlize says. “Let’s go—”

Chase follows Harlize out of the kitchens, and grabs her shoulder before she starts down the main corridor. “Come on, this way is faster!”

The main hangar is in chaos. Deck officers are rapidly directing crowds onto transport ships, crates and crates of supplies hastily being shuffled along the line as people hurry back and forth.

Chase tries not to gape; he’s never seen the main blast doors just open like that, ships being deployed—in the distance, he can see the ominous angular shape of a ship he’s only heard about in stories: a Star Destroyer.

“Imperial ground assault to the west! I need pilots with me, now!” Major Derlin shouts.

The ground rumbles. Something moves on the horizon, and another, and another—monstrously large vehicles stalking forward on legs. Explosions dot the landscape, and X-wings are escorting freighters. One freighter jumps to hyperspace and suddenly the evacuation is terrifyingly real. They’re leaving the planet.

“Echo Base is not going to survive this,” Harlize mutters. “Wilsorr, you boarding?”

“Yeah, I’m coming!” Chase scans the people in the loading bay, but he doesn’t see Jordan anywhere. He types out a quick message on his datapad. Come on, Jordan, where are you?

“Has anyone seen Dr. Tristan Melthabi?” Major Derlin looks up from his datapad. The urgent question hangs in the air, concern drawn on the faces of everyone in the hangar.

“Cave-in on the access corridor to the medical facility,” Deck Officer Serenity Meeks says, tapping her comm unit, bristling with anxious energy. “Dr. Melthabi is trapped, along with three other medtechs.”

“I know another way!” Chase jumps off the loading ramp, waving his hands frantically as he runs up to Meeks.

“Quickly, we may not have much time.” She nods at him. “Go!”

Chase nods, dashing off to the tunnels without thinking. He ignores the frantic thrum of his beating heart, the way his blood pounds in his ears, the laserfire in the distance. It’s just another caf delivery. He can do this with his eyes closed and still bring that caf steaming hot to whoever needs it. Chase may not know how to fire a cannon or pilot any sort of ship, and maybe any weapon in his hands is a hazard, but he knows how to run.

Chase spots the opening to his eastern shortcut and ducks into the narrow tunnel, running as quickly as he can. Right, right, left. Cut through the barracks. Right. This should open up to the access corridor outside the medical facility. He pushes against the crushed ice and manages to clear a path wide enough to squeeze through. A quick glance at his datapad says he made it to the medical facility in 7.3 minutes, a personal record that he doesn’t have time to preen about, but his shortcut takes him right behind the cave-in.

“Dr. Melthabi? Hello? The transport ships are all leaving, you have to evacuate!”

“The cave-in—”

Chase grabs the doctor by the sleeve and guides her and the other three medtechs to the hole he squeezed through next to the cave-in. “Down this tunnel, turn left, run right through the barracks—you should know because Poras’s striped bedspread is really obvious—then right and two lefts and you’ll be at the hangar.”

“Thank you,” the panicked doctor says breathlessly.

Wait, if this corridor collapsed, that means everyone behind it is trapped—

“Go ahead, Doctor! I’m going back this way to see if anyone else needs help.”

Chase runs down the corridor, checking storage rooms and then each of the living quarters. He finds three foot soldiers and two communications officers and a whole group of refugees from Habassa II. Jordan still hasn’t messaged him back yet. Where could he be?

Unless he doesn’t have his datapad on him, which Jordan usually forgets if he’s with the tauntauns—