Марта Уэллс - From a Certain Point of View

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.