Марта Уэллс - From a Certain Point of View

Deena had another word for him: fanatic. Why FS-451 was still a regular stormtrooper was something Deena and the others in the squad had often wondered about, those late nights in the mess when they sat in the corner, sipping Xander’s illegal hooch distilled from the Star Destroyer’s reactor coolant system. FS-451 never joined them, of course. He was better than they were. He never even used his real name, such was his Imperial fervor. He had his operating number tattooed on his chest, right across his collarbone, and when he wandered around off duty he always wore the same bodysuit tunic with the neckline torn into a plunging V so everybody could see it.

Tig said she’d heard he wanted to be a death trooper. All those hours pumping iron in the rec room, trying to boost his stats so he could take the augmentations better. Riccarn wasn’t so sure. Death troopers weren’t of much use in wartime—maybe that was why Lord Vader never had them as an escort. FS-451 had wanted to get his hands dirty, that’s what he’d told Riccarn. He wanted to join the Burners—become an incinerator stormtrooper. Now that, according to FS-451, was real combat. Dropping into an insurgent nest, flaming rebels, watching them burn to death in front of you so you could see the fear and the pain in their eyes, the sudden realization all too late that they were wrong and the Empire was going to win.

Deena hadn’t heard FS-451 talk about his plans, his ambitions. She wasn’t sure that story about joining the Burners was true. She’d spent more time with him than anyone in the squad, so she would know, right?

And now here they were in some kind of floating city, trailing Lord Vader around crisp white corridors that made their own armor look shabby and stained. A Tibanna mining operation, FS-451 had said as they’d flown in on the shuttle. But from what she’d seen, it looked more like a pleasure palace than an industrial center.

It didn’t matter. None of it did, not anymore.

Because she’d had enough. This mission was the very last straw.

Deena had considered quitting before. It was not impossible, although the stories she’d heard of those who had left service didn’t inspire much confidence. The one thing the Empire brought was order. She could see that. For the young and the vulnerable, those looking for a way out, a chance at a new life, there were worse things to do than volunteer for Imperial service. But once that structure and stability were gone, once you were on your own, left to deal with the trauma and stress that had, until that moment, been softened by whatever the Imperial medical droids injected into your arm when you were sent down to the infirmary after a sortie? What then?

The survival rate for stormtroopers in battle often wasn’t great.

The survival rate on the outside was sometimes even worse.

But Deena was different, wasn’t she? She could do something else. She knew she could. Something to…help.

She hadn’t told anyone about her feelings, not even Tig. Because while the others in the squad might not have been fanatics like FS-451, they were still loyal soldiers. Imperial service was a way of life, and at her level, those who surrounded her were all career troopers. Any talk of leaving, any expression of doubt, would probably be considered treasonous even by those closest to her.

So she kept her mouth shut and her eyes front, and she spent days and weeks and months wondering just how much more she could take. How much more killing. How many more deaths. Stormtroopers were disposable. She knew that. She’d come to accept that. But when FS-451 came back one time as the sole survivor of what should have been a routine op for his fireteam, Deena realized that behind every visor there was a living, breathing person.

Just like her.

Just like— whisper it —the rebels.

To be honest, Deena wasn’t sure what to make of the so-called Rebel Alliance. To fight against order and against law and against structure, everything the Empire stood for, made no sense.

But to fight against cruelty, and tyranny? And what actually was the opposite of order? Chaos?

Or…freedom?

The first time she’d walked out was after Alderaan. She’d been forced to watch the holovid along with everyone else, multiple times. The others cheered—FS-451 louder than most—but to Deena, Alderaan was not a victory. It was a pointless waste.

So she’d quit—for a whole five minutes. She’d excused herself, been sick in the toilet out the back of the rec room. When she’d come out, FS-451 had been there, arms folded, leaning against the wall opposite. He hadn’t said anything, but he’d had that look on his face. He had enjoyed the holovid, and now he seemed pleased with the effect it’d had on her, because it meant she understood the scale of it all, how powerful the Empire was, how dalliance with rebellion would result in total extermination.

That was three years ago. And she was still here, standing alongside FS-451, somewhere in the industrial bowels of this city in the clouds. The room was huge but it was dark, lit mostly in a sick orange that came from the vast machinery surrounding them. Ugnaught technicians fussed around the equipment while Lord Vader stood in impassive silence, supervising proceedings, a bounty hunter in battered green Mandalorian armor by his side.

This was the city’s carbon freezer unit, and what they were about to do was as abhorrent as it was pointless.

They were going to put a prisoner in carbonite. Deena’s stomach turned at the very thought of it.

As a method of execution, it was hopelessly inefficient. Carbon freezing was for organic materials destined for long-haul space freight, not as a way of preserving living things. There was no way the prisoner was going to survive the process, not after what she and FS-451 had done to him just a few hours earlier. The bounty hunter hadn’t been keen, and even the city administrator, a flamboyant man in a gold-lined cape, had tried to argue the point. Lord Vader had brushed them both off, claiming that this would be a test, that the prisoner—someone called Captain Solo—would be frozen to see if the real prize, the rebel pilot Lord Vader had become obsessed with, would survive.

Luke Skywalker—the Death Star destroyer—was already on approach in an X-wing starfighter.

Some test. To add to this theater of cruelty, Lord Vader had the process carried out in front of the prisoner’s friends. There was a Wookiee, who had knocked Tig—only just summoned from the shuttle—off the side of the platform in a fit of rage before the prisoner had managed to calm him, and a woman Solo had called “princess.” Was this Leia Organa of Alderaan? Deena had seen her image on the Imperial HoloNet several times, but she looked smaller in person than Deena expected.

Deena remembered the last words the pair had exchanged. She replayed that moment, over and over again in her mind, as the prisoner was lowered into the freezer.

Enough.

As the slab was lifted out and fell to the metal decking with a heavy thud, Deena glanced sideways at FS-451. He hadn’t moved a muscle. She could imagine the cruel smile behind the helmet. That same twisted expression she’d seen the day they’d watched Alderaan die.

And then she looked at the princess. Her eyes were wet, her expression one of total loss.

Deena vowed to remember that, too, forever.

Monsters. All of them.

As for Captain Solo…he was alive. Perfect hibernation. Deena wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. Perhaps it would have been better to have died instantly in the freezer.

FS-451 shuffled a little beside her, his helmet tilting. He was disappointed. Deena knew he was, especially after the care and attention he’d given the prisoner earlier.