Марта Уэллс: From a Certain Point of View

Lorem clapped a hand on Maela’s shoulder. “You mean Maela was right.”

“This will be a huge victory for the Empire. It’s already a victory for Project Swarm.” Dirjo stood up straight, tugging on his uniform jacket and pushing out his chest. “We should go celebrate.”

“Anything to get me out of this cell,” Azier grumbled and stood, not bothering to straighten his rumpled uniform.

Lorem laughed, grabbing Maela’s hand and dragging it away from her station. Maela looked longingly at the flashing lights, the square buttons beckoning her with the promise of other eyes. She shoved her hand in her pocket and rubbed the smooth surface of her eye. She would tell her mother. Send a message of this triumph. Proof that not only the droids deserved to be sent out into the galaxy.

—

She dreamed of ice. Couldn’t stop thinking about it, wondering about it, missing her too-brief sojourn on a planet that actually mattered.

A few days later, when everyone else was on a sleeping shift, Maela slipped back into the Swarm processing center. Her chair was cold and the lights were dim, but the room disappeared around her as she assumed manual control of the remaining probe droid on Hoth.

She slipped inside its metal frame and let the screen fill her whole vision. The cold of her chair became the cold of that barren landscape. She was there.

Gliding along the glaciers and snow dunes, she hoped to find a herd of the animals. But something else caught her eye. Smoke. She drifted toward it, her metal limbs never touching the ground. The smoke billowed from tremendous carcasses of the Empire’s machines, ruined and blasted, scorched and melted. They’d gotten here before she did.

But it wasn’t a “they” and a “her.” She was part of the Empire. She turned toward their target. Whatever had happened here was finished. She told herself she was looking for any information left behind that might help the Empire, but really, she wanted to see this place she would never visit, this place she had discovered, this place she had given to the Empire. It was her victory, too, wasn’t it?

The entrance to the base wasn’t hard to find, blasted and twisted just like the Empire’s machines. She carefully moved inside, navigating places where the roof had collapsed and left chunks of ice and snow to block her way. It was dim, so she adjusted the specifications for the transmission. And then she saw.

There was a taste like metal on her tongue, and a ringing in her ears.

Imperial uniforms, and others. Bodies left behind, broken and ruined. She drifted above them, touching nothing.

There, another body. A different one. She extended an arm. Trapped beneath a tremendous weight of ice and snow, only the creature’s head was visible. Her arm connected with one of those funny curling horns, but—

But it wasn’t her arm. It was the droid’s arm. And she’d never know what this felt like, what any of it felt like. The droid spun and spun and everywhere there were blast marks and bodies and broken machines, and it didn’t matter whether the bodies were rebels or Empire or creatures that should be running on the ice. They were all equally ruined. Destroyed.

She had flung herself through the stars, and she had thought all she was doing was seeing. But an eye was never just an eye. It was connected to a body.

She was the eyes of the Empire. And its hands had done this because of her.

—

Dirjo leaned against his chair, updating them on the Empire’s progress after Hoth and reminding them—yet again—of Piett’s successes. Lorem would say Dirjo was droning on, but Maela thought that was unfair to drones. They didn’t choose to be that way. They were made, and they did what they were told.

They looked where she told them to look.

Her hands twitched, imagining the feel of a curling horn. Project Swarm had succeeded, but it wasn’t over. It would never be over, not as long as the Rebellion lived to hide again. The droid eye stared dully at her from where she’d set it on her workstation. She looked at her reflection, distorted, then went back to her screen. Feed after feed after feed. Hundreds of them, blurring together.

A moon filled with ancient forests, the droid coming in hot enough that it ignited the vegetation around itself, the feed turning into one swirling inferno.

A planet devoid of light, so dark that no setting on the droid could penetrate it. Only repeated motion-sensor triggers hinting that somewhere out there, something was lurking.

An asteroid as big as a planet, the probe damaged upon landing so that it could only stare, motionless, powerless, as it was carried along.

A swamp planet, a riot of plants and bogs, mud and vines, nothing that indicated they should give it a second glance. Except—there, the outline of something in the night. Inorganic. Something that looked distinctly like a half-drowned X-wing.

Dirjo tugged fussily at his jacket. “Results,” he snapped. “The Empire depends on us.”

Maela hit a single button to delete the footage, erasing Dagobah from the Empire’s vision. Then she moved on to the next eyes, seeing clearly at last.

HUNGERMark Oshiro

The ice cared for no one.

He knew that each time he left home, many suns and many, many moons could pass before he had enough to bring back, enough to feed them all. Especially now, as he swatted playfully at one of the cubs that darted between his legs then stood before his father and roared, a squeaking sound that did not inspire fear as it should. It was a start. With more practice, more food, more growth, this cub would soon be just as terrifying as his father.

The two of them made their way up the long passage from the central chamber of the cavern. Without the knowledge they possessed, it would be easy to get lost down here. It was why he and his den-mate had chosen this place so long ago. Someone had once lived here, and the strange things they had left behind were proof of that. Hard objects, not stone or bone or ice, that he had never seen before were strewn about the caves, along with the rotting remains of whatever these beasts consumed.

But this home was well guarded from the cold and from others. To find such a place…well, he knew even back then that this was something permanent, the kind of home that his kind sought most of their lives. The few predators that had ever tried to invade their territory in the time since had become hopelessly lost in the twisting tunnels, in the caverns that all looked so similar in the terrible darkness. They were easy to hunt down then, when they were weak and afraid.

And now he had a clan. Three cubs, their mother, a den-mate, all of them his family. They would not exist if this cavern had not been discovered.

It was time to leave, though.

The den-mate would look after the others while he was gone, but there was little comfort provided by this, only because…well, the hunt was the hunt. It took as long as it did, and there was no guarantee once you were out there. Days could blend together without a single spotting of prey.

But he had to go.

He had to keep his clan alive.

And so the need pulled him forth, and the mother who bore his children and his den-mate nuzzled him, their way of showing respect for what he was going to do. The cubs yapped and squealed and didn’t really understand; they merely nipped at his feet. As he stepped out into the wind and the cold and the ice and the snow, one of them followed, swiping at his legs. He stopped and pushed her back, then growled. She understood. She remained in one spot to watch him leave, and soon, he disappeared into the unending whiteness of the tundra.

The hunt had begun.

—

He walked. He crested the nearest range, and his instinct guided him toward a series of caves far in that direction. He had once found a pod of his favorite prey there: the beasts who stood upright, had those useless horns on the sides of their faces. They were easy pickings, at least if you focused on one of them at a time. As a group, they could be formidable, but it was easier to separate one, to chase it down, to prey on its fear that it no longer had the others to protect it.