From a Certain Point of View

by Seth Dickinson

  It is not possible. Such beings do not exist.

  Such beings do not exist.

  Such beings—

  A century later, the thought begun in the asteroid field of the Clew finishes. Sy-O exhales the breath taken as the beings left its gullet in their ship of pain. The slow flapping of the butterflies’ wings are the punctuation of this thought. They have long since forgiven it for calling them nothing. They do not hold on to hurt. Hurt is a photon; it grows dimmer as it travels away from its source.

  It is not possible. Such beings do not exist. They can never exist. Everything in the galaxy traveled the Road of All Moons. Even if they did not know what those words meant. Even if they could not understand that they did move in the great caravan. They moved nonetheless. The slow entropic expansion of matter into void moved every being together. In their tiniest cells, in their planets and systems and meta-systems. Exogorths moved faster, that was all. With more purpose. The others took the long way.

  But everyone traveled, all together. Always. That was a small part of what the incandescence the woman carried meant. There was another word for it, a word those beings used. But Sy-O could not recall. A small word, for small mouths. But it meant something so big.

  Sy-O would meet its beloveds again. It would meet the atoms that had once been them, which was no different. In the incandescence it had sensed reverberating through the woman, it would find them again and they would laugh at these ancient times long past, these griefs that once seemed so important. They would understand then the love Sy-O meant when it sealed its mouth and altered its internal pressure and instructed its respiratory system to begin the manufacture of oxygen. Sy-O would understand in turn what urgency drove them so hard toward unsafety. It would know the other beings they knew, it would grasp what kept them so hot and quick. What had made them afraid. And in that glow, they would all move as one outward, toward the known and unknown.

  One day. They would find each other again, and no one would be alone.

  Goodbye, Sy-O thinks a century afterward. How unsorrowed I will be to see you, my friends. One day soon. On the longer path.

  LORD VADER WILL SEE YOU NOW

  John Jackson Miller

  “Why does Lord Vader keep stormtroopers stationed on his bridge?”

  “To carry out the bodies.”

  It was a silly joke in the ranks when Rae Sloane was just a junior officer—but it wasn’t funny for long, and no one had dared to utter it in years. It was too real, had touched too many.

  Unbidden, that joke popped into Sloane’s head as she led the stormtroopers down the corridor. That, she knew, was the only way to think about an activity she’d done thousands of times before. If she looked behind her even once, she might see that this time was different: that the troopers’ weapons were pointed at her, and that she wasn’t a commodore, but a captive. But she did not look back, and as long as she didn’t, she remained in command—in her own mind, if nowhere else.

  As much as Sloane despised self-deception in others, it made sense here. She had never visited the Super Star Destroyer before, but fellow officers had told her that the Executor seemed designed to strike terror not just in those it opposed, but in those it carried. With every step taking her deeper into the metal warren, she understood what they meant.

  “This is it,” the trooper behind her said as a pair of doors parted to admit her. “Step forward.”

  She did—alone.

  The chamber was at once large and claustrophobic, bright and in shadow. A large cylindrical black structure towered at its center. A massive containment unit, perhaps, or a giant torpedo? She thought she knew every part to an Imperial capital ship, but this was new. She decided to assume it was ordnance of some kind—but why would it be here, so deep in the ship?

  Seeing nobody before her, she spoke to the air. “I…was told to report to Lord Vader.”

  “Keep your voice down,” rasped out a voice from behind her. She looked back to see a uniformed figure standing near the bulkhead, to the right of the doors she’d entered through. Piett spoke in a tone both low and urgent. “Step here!”

  “Of course—Admiral.”

  She caught her breath as she joined him. She’d nearly said Captain. Firmus Piett was a nonentity, a rank plebe when she first knew him; now he commanded Death Squadron—and her. She thought to congratulate the bland-faced officer, before remembering it wasn’t the kind of promotion one celebrated. He was just in the right place when it was the wrong time for someone else: Admiral Ozzel.

  Things changed fast in the Imperial Navy. Especially depending on who else was aboard.

  “You will deliver your report to me,” Piett said at the wall.

  She looked around again. Was Vader making him wait, too? And if so, why in such a strange place? “I’m sorry, Admiral, but my orders—”

  “Orders? You’re here because you’ve ignored orders.” Piett glanced anxiously at the room and its looming cylindrical centerpiece. “Lord Vader will know what is said here. Speak, but understand: He already knows what you did. It is only in respect for your services to the Emperor that you are receiving this chance to justify your actions.”

  “My actions, Admiral?”

  “Don’t play games. You were recalled from your temporary assignment soon after the action at Hoth began. You should have been back long before now—but instead, you remained away, making no communication. All while your command burned.” His whisper grew louder. “Lord Vader is not interested in your excuses or apologies, and neither am I!”

  She steeled herself. “I make no excuses—and I never apologize.”

  But she did explain.

  * * *

  —

  She’d missed it.

  Carefully traversing the Anoat asteroid belt in the Lambda-class shuttle Bastinade, Commodore Sloane reread her orders to return—and about the events that had prompted them.

  The discovery of the hidden rebel base. The colossal ground battle that followed. A chance to tangle with Luke Skywalker, the destroyer of the Death Star and murderer of her old commanding officer, Grand Moff Tarkin. And the rebels’ hurried evacuation of said base.

  She’d missed it all.

  She’d missed it because she was on the other side of the galaxy, leaving Ultimatum with a substitute captain as she went on a weeks-long inspection tour of new shuttle technology. She’d missed it, one might argue, because she knew her stuff. No officer in the Imperial Navy had a better handle on the operational capabilities of the fleet, and how to improve them.

  But there was no putting a good face on it. The greatest ground battle of her lifetime—not just a career maker, but a possible career pinnacle—had taken place while she was fiddling around at the shipyards at Fondor, trying to tell the engineers which so-called upgrades her shuttle, Bastinade, didn’t need, even as they made them anyway. The call from Piett—Admiral Piett!—to return to Death Squadron and retake command of Ultimatum had been a blessing.

  There was just one problem. After the battle, the Millennium Falcon, likely carrying members of the rebel leadership, had fled into the asteroid field, and it was proving an excellent place to hide. So excellent that, hours after entering the field, she still couldn’t find where Ultimatum—or the rest of the fleet it was traveling with—was. Rocks, rocks, and more rocks filled the broad expanse in the viewport before Sloane.

  “Looks like the Alderaan Welcome Center out there,” Kanna Deltic said as she entered the cockpit, hydrospanner in hand. Sloane’s precocious lieutenant, simultaneously her most able scientist and her least favorite person in the galaxy, had been her sole companion these last weeks during the detachment.

  But Deltic was right about the mess before them—an immense obstacle course whose hazards had already inflicted damage on Bastinade’s transmitter. “Still can’t get a clear transmission in or out,” Sloane
said, rechecking her instruments. “You’ve tried rerouting the power feed?”

  “You tried it first,” Deltic said, rubbing grease from her face. “Didn’t work then, isn’t working now.” She clambered beneath the starboard console and called out, “The debris’s fouled up the scanner array something awful, too.”

  Sloane had another idea. “Try to—”

  “Trying.”

  The commodore let out a breath. She had to get back before it was too late, before she missed anything else—but as she sat back from the controls, she contemplated that it may already have been too late for her.

  That’s why I keep getting sent off on these damn fool errands, right? She’d actually made vice admiral years earlier, only to be busted down barely a heartbeat later for letting the rebel Kanan Jarrus slip through her fingers on the planet Lahn. She’d have lost command of Ultimatum back then, had it not been for her patron in the aristocracy. But Baron Danthe had fallen out of the Emperor’s favor, and in the years since, Sloane had gotten every mundane assignment there was. Tasks, not task forces.

  So the Fondor junket was really just another boondoggle in a series, taking her farther from where she had wanted to go. Farther from advancement, from adventure—and from the eyes of people like Grand Moff Tarkin and, yes, even Vader, both of whom had rewarded her in the past.

  Tarkin was gone now, and she’d rarely seen Vader at all. And while Piett’s elevation suggested that proximity to the latter might not be such a good thing, the truth was that in the Imperial Navy, you needed to be seen—and you needed to be seen on your ship. She knew that better than most, because Ultimatum was never supposed to be her command in the first place. She’d served as a substitute while its intended captain was away; perseverance had made it hers permanently.

  It was a danger to be away from one’s post for any time at all—especially when her relief was someone as experienced and capable as Canonhaus. She had to get him off of Ultimatum’s bridge before he stole her command altogether.

  If only she could find it.

  “These readings are gibberish.” Sloane looked back out onto the asteroid field and frowned. “The whole squadron’s somewhere in here. I refuse to believe we can’t find it.”

  “I refuse to believe in reincarnation, but I’m pretty sure Count Vidian came back as this new computer system,” Deltic said, emerging from beneath. “The autonavigator keeps trying to send us into asteroids. The reactor interface thinks we want to play pazaak with it. And as for the shields—”

  “Enough.” Sloane rolled her eyes. Deltic had always been a bit too familiar—and much too peculiar—but the reference to a former nemesis of theirs was apt. Sloane had chosen Bastinade for the refit as it was the last survivor of the original complement of Ultimatum’s shuttles; the first two had long ago been destroyed in her first encounter with Jarrus. But just about every “advance” the engineers at the testing station had installed had failed since they’d entered the asteroid belt.

  She began punching controls. “Shut it all off. I’m going to manual.”

  Deltic reluctantly took the copilot’s chair. “My instructors always said I’d grow up to be part of a debris field.”

  Control stick in hand, Sloane looked at the boulders tumbling in space before her. She pointed above Deltic. “Activate the near-range scanner—the one for docking operations.”

  “It won’t help us avoid the big rocks.”

  “It’ll tell me where the small ones are. Do it!”

  Sloane had been trained to fly the most colossal ships in existence; she knew something about avoiding collisions with the very large. She’d kept current on her other pilot ratings as well, if only to be able to demonstrate to her underlings that she understood every job.

  Still, the asteroid belt the rebels had chosen to flee into was like no other she’d seen. Hours passed, with no proof that Bastinade was any closer to exiting the field.

  Her hands sweating, Sloane had escaped what felt like a hundred close calls when far ahead to starboard, she spotted a flash. “There. On that big one.”

  Deltic checked it out on the scope. “It’s TIE bombers, pounding the hell out of the asteroids.”

  “Looking for the rebels. Signal them.”

  “It’s not going to work.”

  “Do it anyway. At the very least, we can follow them home.” Or we can try. Sloane banked the shuttle and gave pursuit.

  She’d closed almost half the distance when a hammer blow aft disabused her of that idea. An errant stone struck one of the sublight engines, and while it did not result in an explosion, it did reduce their top speed dramatically.

  “Forget talking to the TIEs,” Deltic said. “They’re not hearing us.”

  “See if we can at least listen to them.”

  Through static, they caught part of a transmission—and as she listened, Sloane’s heart sank:

  “—repeating, bomber squadron, this is bomber leader, relaying change of plan. Return to Devastator, not Ultimatum. Repeat, do not return to Ultimatum.” A pause. “Ultimatum destroyed.”

  Sloane released the throttle and stared at the console. The message repeated, this time more broken as the TIEs shrank in the distance ahead. It was clear that an asteroid had taken out Ultimatum’s bridge and main reactor, leaving a blazing wreck.

  There was also something about how the bombing campaign had rooted out no rebels at all—but Sloane barely heard it.

  Ultimatum—her starship—was gone.

  She closed her eyes for a moment—which was as long as she dared, in that environment. She thought about those aboard who had served her long, if not always well. She shook her head and looked to Deltic. The woman’s eyes were wide; her lips moving as if calculating.

  After several moments of silence, the science officer said, “I guess I don’t have to worry about that money I owe Ensign Cauley.”

  “Shut up, Lieutenant.” Sloane squinted hard. She hadn’t cried since childhood, and wouldn’t do it now over this—and certainly not before Deltic. But she knew she had to go, while there might be time to get anyone off what remained of the vessel. If she could just get some useful information from any of these damn systems—

  “Wait. What’s that?”

  Deltic looked down at the monitor. “Near-range system’s picked up a cluster of objects. Two meters long.” She looked more closely. “Odd shapes.”

  “Those aren’t rocks.” She grabbed the control yoke again and banked Bastinade, urging it ahead as best she could.

  “The crazy readings are into this system, too.” Deltic stood and stared outside. “It says those are organic!”

  “Bodies.”

  “Maybe we got lucky and the rebels jumped ship?”

  “That usually doesn’t mean jumping out the air lock.” But as Bastinade eased closer, she could tell the scanning system was right, at least about this one thing: The contacts were organic. They just weren’t humans.

  “Are those—?”

  “Yes. You remember the mission we had in the asteroid field near Taris? What we found there?” Sloane’s jaw set. “It could be why the TIE bombers aren’t having any luck. We’ve got to inform the squadron.”

  “That could be a problem.” Deltic gestured at the transmitter—as dead as it had been. “We’ll have to do this in person. But at the rate we’re going—”

  Sloane’s eyes narrowed. “You’re right. We may have time for something else. Do we still have that new forward cargo collector mounted under the cockpit…?”

  * * *

  —

  “You did what?”

  For some reason, Admiral Piett had not wanted either of them to raise their voices during her explanation, despite no one else being in the room. But he seemed to care less about that now.

  “It’s as I explained,” Sloane said. “We found the f
irst corpse, and noticed another.” Arms crossed behind her back, she stood straighter. “A whole trail of them in space. Mynocks.”

  Piett’s pallor grew a shade redder. “Why would you care about finding mynocks? They’re common to the space lanes.”

  “But not to asteroid fields—not unless there’s food. And that means ships, with power cables to dine on.”

  “They could have fallen off any of ours. And how could they be dead? Mynocks are immune to the hazards of space.”

  “Begging the admiral’s pardon, but we know these didn’t come from our ships—and we know how they died. They were in an exogorth.”

  “An exogorth?” Piett looked at her as if she were mad. “A space slug?”

  “That’s the common term. I encountered them during one of my industrial support missions.”

  Piett was flustered. “There are no space slugs in the Anoat field.”

  “I thought that, too—most of the asteroids are poor candidates on the Vandrayk Scale. But there must be some, because that’s where the mynocks came from.”

  Piett looked to the ceiling. “Panic. Panic and guilt have taken your senses.”

  Sloane kept going. “The environment inside the mouth of a slug is warm and moist. Not breathable, but an atmosphere. When a slug wakes and emerges, a few mynocks are invariably expelled from its oral cavity. An observer would hardly notice the small creatures—but the abrupt transition is often fatal to them. We call it mawshock.”

  “I call it nonsense.”

  “And if there are space slugs, that means there are tunnels deep enough that our scans can’t reach them—and we already know our scans can’t penetrate the beasts’ hides. Our bombers wouldn’t have been able to succeed.”