Марта Уэллс - From a Certain Point of View

Sometimes, Emon wondered what the hell he’d gotten himself into.

Emon followed the orders he’d received and fired his blaster at the approaching walkers. Up and down the trench, the rebel infantry sprayed a steady assault of blaster bolts; the turrets, which were dug into the snow and provided heavier firepower, unleashed concentrated blasts. Bolt after bolt landed true, striking the AT-ATs in concert with the snowspeeders’ assault.

And not a single strike managed to leave so much as a scorch mark on the Empire’s armored machines.

“Maybe when they get closer we’ll be able to do some damage!” Andry shouted.

“You really want to get closer to these things?”

Emon continued to fire. At least his energy pack was holding, though the bitter irony was not lost on him.

Ahead, Emon watched as a snowspeeder took a direct hit; flames erupted out of its rear—maybe its power generator had been penetrated, but Emon couldn’t be sure—and the vehicle careened through the air before pounding into the frozen ground. It was more flaming wreckage than ship by the time it crashed.

The walkers kept coming. Emon’s ears began to ring. Explosions continued to rip through the trench, one after another after another; the crunch of the AT-AT’s metal hooves thundered across the expanse separating the only line of rebel defense from the unstoppable enemy. To Emon, though, it all seemed so distant. Someone was shouting, and their voice sounded like it was coming from the far end of a long, dark tunnel—too far for the words to reach Emon.

Emon continued to fire. His bolts joined all the others, bringing flashes of color to the bleached landscape, but they still had no effect. The shouting continued. A hand gripped Emon’s shoulder, hard. It pulled at him, but Emon squeezed the trigger on his A295, unabated. Smoke wafted from a fire burning somewhere nearby, and it filled Emon’s nostrils.

It tasted like the ashes of Koshaga, hot and dry on his lips.

Emon blinked as memories of his homeworld flashed across his mind. He remembered the swarm of stormtroopers—their white armor practically glowing against the night’s darkness—overwhelming the Lowlands with their endless numbers. He remembered following his brothers and sisters into an unthinkable retreat, only to encounter more of the enemy everywhere they turned. Emon’s home, infiltrated and ravaged, had been twisted into a maze, and every turn seemed to lead him back into the enemy’s crosshairs. He remembered the Empire’s monstrous machines obliterating everything in sight, sending a clear message: They’d rather see this world burn than see it resist.

And Emon remembered running, leading his people—so very few of them—to safety as, indeed, Koshaga burned.

—

Emon gasped, startled by the hand that was wrapped around the sleeve of his coat. He was on Hoth, not Koshaga, and Andry was at his side, screaming in his ear.

“You gone deaf, Emon?” he howled. “Sarge says to get down!”

The world came rushing back. Alongside Andry, Emon slid to the ground and, again, took cover against the trench. The wall quaked at Emon’s back; it—and everything around Emon—felt on the brink of collapse.

Emon looked at Andry, who was covering his head as chunks of ice blasted off the trench’s opposite shelf and came hurtling forward. Emon didn’t know much about him, other than his home planet was Alderaan, and if any system was worse off than Koshaga, Alderaan was it. Up and down the line, Emon identified squadmates that he thought he’d understood—they were people like him, like Andry, who came to the Alliance because they had nowhere else to go. Maybe they were motivated by revenge, maybe by justice, maybe by plain old rage. Regardless, they were the losers, and they were taking up arms against a proven superior force.

And yet—armed with insufficient weaponry and outnumbered to an unfathomable degree—they still fought. Soldiers returned to their feet; they pushed their blasters back down into Hoth’s frozen surface, and they fired back at an enemy they knew they couldn’t stop.

Emon couldn’t understand why.

“What are we doing?” Emon asked, grabbing hold of Andry just as he, too, was standing back up. “We don’t stand a chance—we have to get out of here!”

Amid the panic and the fear, Andry turned to Emon, and he smiled. “You don’t understand what we’re doing here, do you, kid?”

Emon could only shake his head, because he didn’t understand. On Koshaga, they had had better weapons, better resources, and an infantry that dwarfed the Alliance’s. And still, they were annihilated. What could the Alliance possibly hope to achieve against the Empire’s might?

“You know,” Andry continued, “I’ve heard some people say that the Empire is a dark shadow spreading across the galaxy. But you know what? Shadows pass. The Empire’s darkness pushes down on you relentlessly; it smothers you until darkness is all that’s left. Think about Koshaga, Kref. Now picture what happened to your home happening everywhere.”

Emon didn’t have to think hard.

“None of us want this war, Kref,” Andry said. “We want what comes after the war.”

Emon paused. After. It seemed so strange, but he’d never really considered an after to the conflict on Koshaga. The war always was, and everyone assumed it always would be. They didn’t fight to win, Emon realized—they fought not to lose.

Alongside Andry, Emon got back into position. The moment he did, a profound rumbling shot across the battlefield. Emon caught sight of a downed AT-AT, its face buried in the snow, just before a pair of snowspeeders raced by, dousing the machine in blasterfire. The Empire’s mobile weapon of destruction exploded, bits of it bursting across Hoth’s surface.

The trench, galvanized from one end to the other, sounded with cheers. Emon’s own voice blended with the celebratory cacophony, though he didn’t realize when he’d joined in.

As the exultation died down, Sergeant Callum marched up and down the narrow space, pulling his troops near.

“Word from our scouts is we’ve got stormtroopers approaching our position,” Callum said, his commanding voice heard sharply over the din of battle. “We cannot let them get inside the base. You understand me? The enemy will not pass this trench.”

“Yes, sir!” Emon and his squadmates assented.

Still, Emon realized as he turned back to the battlefield, even with one walker down, the battle was far from over. With Andry at his side, Emon joined his squad in resuming fire against the enemy. Andry’s theory was proven false—proximity to the walkers didn’t make them any more vulnerable. Another snowspeeder was blown out of the sky and, just a few meters away, a P-Tower took a direct hit; the heat of its flames warmed Emon’s face, yet still he kept firing—until Cally Pon yelled “Troopers!” and Emon and the rest of his squad shifted their focus to the western edge of the trench. There, barely visible against the bleary white landscape and through the haze of smoke, was a line of snowtroopers, rushing their position.

Emon was almost relieved to see an enemy he stood a chance against.

“Fan out!” Callum yelled. “Press the attack!”

Emon followed Andry up and out of the trench. They charged forward, though Emon’s legs felt weak and tired, like he’d been holding his position in the trench for days on end. He fired his A295, and his first bolt struck a trooper square in the chest. The trooper crumpled to the ground, and others soon followed. As the enemy’s numbers diminished and Emon’s squad remained, Emon couldn’t help but feel like there was something shared between himself and the beings he fought alongside.