Марта Уэллс - From a Certain Point of View

Thank you very much for the tactics manual, Academy geniuses. It’s all well and good saying that we can trade two for one with the enemy and come out ahead, but I’m not volunteering to be part of the two, and neither should you, if you can help it.

—

We skirt the edge of the asteroid field, engines building up to their endless shriek as we head to our patrol zone.

That sound, like a cross between an angry beast and a groundcar skidding on wet asphalt. They say it drives some pilots crazy, but I love it. It’s ugly and angry, perfect for the TIE. When we swoop in on the enemy it’s like the machines themselves are screaming with rage.

Not that there’s any enemy here, of course. Just space, lots of empty space, a three-dimensional zone encompassing one side of the asteroid field where we fly the prescribed search pattern, an ever-expanding spiral. What we’re in for, probably, is four hours of hot nothing, then back to the ship for a recharge and out again for four more. It’s fine with me. In my book, it’s a good day when nobody’s shooting at you.

Shockwave disagrees. (However stupid the nickname, it’s easier than memorizing a new cloudfly’s designator every time one dies.) “If I have to fly past these scum-sucking rocks one more time…”

“It’s a different zone than yesterday,” Howl says. “So these are new and unfamiliar rocks.”

“Could be worse,” Flameskull says. “The bomber squadrons actually have to go into the mess. They’ve been blasting, trying to spook the bastards into moving.”

“What, exactly, are we supposed to be tracking down out here?” Dawn’s the longest-lived of our cloudflies. She seems nice enough. But. Rule number one.

“A modified YT-1300 light freighter.” This from Clipper. Clipper is an Academy boy. That means he chose to be here, unlike the rest of us, who just tested high in the right categories on the conscript intake exams. Academy boys all want to get promoted out of the TIE/ln squadrons as soon as they can, get themselves at least an interceptor, start climbing the ranks, maybe shoot for the Imperial Guards. Never trust Academy boys. Maybe I should make that a rule.

“Yeah, I read the mission brief,” Dawn says. “But why have we got half the fleet chasing after one busted old freighter?”

It’s a reasonable question. But this is the Imperial Navy, we don’t do reasonable questions.

“Ask Lord Vader,” Howl says. “But be ready for a real short conversation.”

The spiral expands outward. The rocks tumble and wheel in the light of the distant sun. My mind goes blank, as though my fighter is disappearing around me, and I’m the one flying through hard vacuum. The smallest twitch of my fingers pulses the thrusters, sends me into a gentle turn, easy as thought.

—

Rule number four: Learn to love your machine.

This one might surprise you, given that I spent the last rule crapping all over the TIE/ln. But. But.

They built this thing, this ugly piece-of-junk made-by-the-lowest-bidder mass-production death trap, and somehow—presumably by accident—they made something beautiful. It turns out, when you take away the shields and the armor and the hyperdrive and all the rest, when you strip a starfighter down to the absolute bare minimum, what you’re left with flies like a damn dream.

There’s no excess weight on it anywhere, because excess weight might cost money. It has power to spare, and it twists and curves like an exotic dancer. You can pull moves that, if Joe Rebel tried it in his X-wing, he’d find it coming apart around him. Only the A-wing comes close, but the A-wing is a creature of straight lines and raw force, all thrust and no finesse.

TIEs are all about finesse. Fly it long enough, and you learn when to tickle the thrusters with a light touch, when to jam the throttle in and push the stick hard over, how to spin and roll and come out right behind some meathead, guns blazing.

I knew a guy who got the promotion every TIE pilot dreams of, up to driving a Lambda shuttle. A nice, safe bus with plenty of shields to protect the brass. After a month, he gave it up, transferred back to the line squadrons. He said he missed the rush.

At the time, I didn’t understand it. It wasn’t until I saw Howl fly that I really grasped how you could fall in love with this machine.

—

Howl transferred to the Avenger about six months before Hoth. Two years since Yavin and things were still hot, rebel cells flaring up and Imperial command determined to crack down, show that the loss of the Death Star had only been a minor setback. We were way understrength, and basic training could barely crank out cloudflies fast enough.

But Howl wasn’t a cloudfly. She’d been flying nearly as long as I had, already on her third tour. That she was still in a line squadron after so long told me that she either had no ambition (like me) or was a terminal screwup (also like me, depending on who you ask). So I was interested enough to look up when she reported to the squad in the middle of mess, and I had to admit I liked what I saw. Hair dark as space, just a little longer than regulation, lips the color of a fresh bruise quirked with a hint of sarcastic smile. Not everyone can pull off the Imperial dress uniform—I look like a ten-year-old boy—but she managed.

In a mess full of teenage cloudflies, I wasn’t the only one looking, of course. I think five boys and two girls offered to bunk with her that first night, and she sent them all down in flames. Canny operator that I am, I held back for a while.

Okay, I was just chicken. I’m better in a cockpit than I am with people. “Amara Kel’s Rules for Getting Laid Aboard a Star Destroyer” would be a really short book.

As luck would have it, though, Howl and I got put on patrol together, so we had a lot of time to get to know each other out in the black. On one of our first shifts, I asked her what a Howlrunner was.

“It’s a canid native to Kamar,” she told me as our TIEs screamed through the big empty. “Massive, nasty-looking thing with a skull for a face. Hunts humans, if it gets the chance.”

“Is that where you’re from?” I asked. “Kamar?”

She laughed. “Kamar’s a desert full of talking bugs. I just saw a holo and thought it sounded cool. Plus everyone else in basic was picking names like ‘Stormsmasher’ and ‘Foe-Render’ so I didn’t want to get left out.”

I laughed out loud. What I’d learned on these patrols was that under her polished exterior, Howl was something of a goofball. The combination did warm squishy things to my insides, and I had to breathe and remind myself to remember rule number one.

“So why Shadow?” she said, a little while later. We were far enough out that command wasn’t going to be listening in.

“Dunno,” I mumbled. Nobody had ever asked me that before. “Nobody notices a shadow, right?”

About a week later, things got hot again, thanks to Imperial Intelligence. Now, any TIE pilot—any navy officer, really—can tell you all kinds of stories about Imperial Intelligence and the thrilling works of fiction they produce, safe behind their keypads. This was actually one of their better moments, considering. The rebel supply base was right where they said it would be, in a derelict Clone Wars–era deep-space installation. Only they’d missed the little detail that the rebels had been there awhile, so they’d repaired the defenses and upgunned the place into something closer to a battle station. When the Avenger dropped out of hyperspace at close range, it took only a few broadsides before Captain Needa decided he didn’t like the way things were going. He backed off and told the bombers to work the place over a bit to make it more digestible, and we went along as escort. The rebels had anticipated this, naturally, and some X-wings and A-wings came out to join the party.