Марта Уэллс - From a Certain Point of View

—

One shift ends. Sleepwell pills; supposed to pack a whole night’s rest into a quick nap, but all they ever give me is bad dreams. Shower. Two precious hours in the rack. Next shift begins. Alarm goes off, pop a stim, the motion of opening the bottle so automatic I could do it in total darkness. Feel my heart slam against my ribs, limbs shaky with nervous, chemical energy. Roll out of bed half naked, climb straight into my flight suit. One of the cloudflies stares like he’s never seen a girl before I zip up. Maybe he hasn’t. Lot of weird planets in the Outer Rim.

This shift’s assignment glows red on a wall screen, but I don’t bother reading it. It’s the same as the shift before, and the shift before that. Patrol the edge of the asteroid field by half flights, make sure nothing gets out.

Down the gangway, slide down a ladder, moving by feel and memory, the Star Destroyer Avenger ’s blueprints now a part of my blood and bones. Grab my helmet from the rack in the ready room, round the corner to the hangar, swing myself into the nearest docking tube.

A cockpit so tight the only way in is to hang from the hatch rail and lower yourself into the seat. Foam cradles me as I settle in, my hands moving in more automatic reflexes—air hose slots into the back of my suit, restraint straps click in beside it. My fingers flick switches, powering up comms, navigation, flight control, glowing lights rippling around me in cascades of red and green. Displays come to life with a rising hum.

The TIE/ln. Home, sweet home.

—

Rule number two: Don’t be a hero.

When you join up, you get a speech about how we are the true defenders of the Empire, the real front line, where durasteel meets vacuum, and that means upholding the proud traditions of blah blah blah. A lot of cloudflies take this speech very seriously, I guess. Or else they’re just so happy to be off whatever dirtball gave birth to them that the sheer exuberance drives them to push the limits, cut the corners, and end up a thin carbonized smear on some tumbling rock.

You know what the leading cause of exploding cloudflies is? Definitely not rebel blasters. It’s running into things, or else running into one another. It makes sense, when you think about it. There aren’t that many rebels, but there’s a whole galaxy full of stuff to smash into.

They must tell them this in basic training. They certainly told me. But there are always some who think they’re going to make that turn, beat that blast door closed, dodge that rock, and then, well. Crunch, boom, plastoid medal, the Emperor thanks you for your sacrifice, citizen.

Don’t fly slow. That just gets you a different kind of dead. But fly careful. And never be the one in front.

—

“Attention Theta Squadron.” Lieutenant Obrax’s voice in my ear. “Prepare to receive a message from Captain Needa.”

A tiny holo appears above my controls, blue and flickering. I’ve never met the captain of the Avenger in person, but he’s familiar from a hundred announcements like this one. Arch and aristocratic, like so many of the Empire’s elite. He glares like he’s disappointed with me in particular.

“Lord Vader has impressed on me that this mission continues to be one of the utmost importance to the Empire,” he says. “It demands constant vigilance and attention to duty. If I discover any pilots returning after failing to complete their assigned patrol, I will personally escort them out the nearest air lock. I hope that’s sufficiently clear.”

The holo cuts out. Motivational speaking, Imperial Navy style.

My comm lights up with a private channel from Howl.

“And then I will personally piss into the air lock,” she intones, mocking Needa’s Core accent. “And then I will personally fly the ship into a sun before pushing you out, because that’s just how angry I will be. Do I make myself clear ?”

I make sure I’m not on the general channel before snickering, another old instinct.

“You should put together a show,” I tell her. “We could sell tickets.”

“Wait till you hear my Vader.” She mimes heavy, raspy breathing.

Lieutenant Obrax comes on again. “You heard the captain,” he says. “No excuses. Lock down and prep for launch.”

I put my helmet on, hear the click of the latch and the hiss as ozone-scented air fills my nose. Flip another few switches and my machine rumbles to life, twin ion engines projecting a familiar buzz I can feel in my teeth. Test the controls, stick, foot pedals, exterior thrusters twisting in response. I glance at the diagnostics, see green lights. Flip on the comm.

“Theta Four, go for launch.” Among ourselves, we go by our chosen nicknames—mine is “Shadow”—but only elite hotshots can get away with using them when command is listening.

“Theta Seven, go for launch.” That’s Howl, only moments behind me.

The other four pilots in my half flight are cloudflies. Fresh recruits. The best of them has only been with us four months. The worst came in a week ago, just before we deployed to Hoth. Hell of a time to start your tour.

“Theta Eleven, go for launch.”

“Theta Thirteen, go for launch.”

“Theta Eighteen, go for launch.”

“Theta Twenty-Two, go for launch.”

Clipper and Dawn, Flameskull and Shockwave. The latter are good examples of why you shouldn’t let recruits pick their own nicknames.

“Theta Squadron, launch,” Obrax says. “Glory to the Empire!”

The docking clamp extends out into the cargo bay with a whine of hydraulics, then lets go. My TIE drops through the insubstantial blue of the atmo shield and out into the black.

—

Rule number three: Don’t go at them head-on.

I know, it’s not what the tactics manual says. Listen, though.

If you manage to keep from crashing into things for long enough, eventually you’re going to find yourself going up against an actual enemy starfighter. It’s what we’re here for, after all. For the last few years, that’s usually meant rebels.

The tactics manual says that a TIE squadron, twenty-four ships strong, should endeavor to go directly at enemy starfighters, maximizing the number of guns on target. The Academy geniuses who wrote this calculate thusly: maximum firepower, maximum casualties on both sides. Some of ours go down, some of theirs go down. We have more pilots and fighters than they do, because we’re the Empire, so we win. Glory to the Empire!

As a bonus, recommending this approach means you don’t need to spend that much time prepping your pilots, because any half-trained womp rat can fly straight at the bad guys and hold down the FIRE button until he gets blown into flaming dust, right?

Right. So. A couple of things.

It’s easy to feel invincible in a TIE, if you haven’t taken one into battle before. It seems big and solid, and the practice targets blow in a satisfying way when you hit them with the rapid-fire lasers.

It’s easy to forget that the rebels fly X-wings, A-wings, B-wings, Y-wings. They seem to have a lot of credits and not a lot of pilots (easier to find people willing to support the Cause with a few credits than actually jump in the cockpit and die for it, I guess), so they fly ships with little amenities like “shields” and “armor” and “hyperdrives” and “repair astromechs.” The ship that we fly, on the other hand, was meticulously designed by the brains at Sienar Fleet Systems to be the absolute cheapest platform that can carry a laser cannon a few thousand kilometers.

So you go in head-on. Pew pew pew! And the X-wing’s shields barely flicker, and it starts to fire back, and you realize very briefly that it has twice your firepower plus a rack of proton torpedoes, and then, you know. Thank you for your service, et cetera.