From A Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back by various (Part 4/8)
From A Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back by various (Part 4/8)
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"The Final Order" by Seth Dickinson
Tian graduated from the Imperial Naval Academy on Carida with excellent marks and is a staunch by-the-book sort of person. Canonhaus wonders if she even knows how to breathe without being given an order to do so! She previously served on Enigma and Victory at Batonn. According to Canonhaus, "She was calm, cheerful, occasionally quite droll at the captain's table. [...] When he laughed at her quips, Canonhaus felt his dry scabs crack, and some of the old blood, the old love for the work, welled up to stain his thoughts." And in the end we see that maybe he does care about this young officer just a tad more than he lets on.
Canonhaus is a conflicted yet resigned man who understands that the Empire is a blackhole of nothingness and not a path to peace and tranquility. He also looked up to Ozzel as a man with initiative...interesting because so many others looked down upon the admiral...although he does later call him a fool for his decisions regarding Hoth. Canonhaus used to captain the Majestic and had grown comfortable with the ten thousand people under his command, learning their files, failures, and talents. And now was stuck with learning a whole new crew of people, much to his displeasure. I was a little thrown off by the confirmation in Rae Sloane's short story that Canonhaus was just standing in for her while she was off completing an assignment because man does he act like the Ultimatum is his. He holds on to some trauma from his time on Haruun Kal as a lieutenant ("and liaison to the stormtroopers aboard the Quasar Fire-class cruiser-carrier Swoop.") when he was fighting Korun natives who would attack from trees at night. The man suffers from some serious PTSD and paranoia such that I can't believe he still holds command of anything, poor guy!
The in-depth discussion between Tian and Canonhaus begins as they expound upon whether or not Ozzel made the right move in coming out of hyperspace right over Hoth. Tian thinks that his aggressive tactic was admirable but yet didn't consider the fact Vader was wanting prisoners from Hoth and so Ozzel should have been cautious. They then move on to talking about Vader's execution of Ozzel and this leads to Canonhaus's internal monologue over the realities of the Empire, "The New Order does not exist to bring order to anything. It is not the bright strong energy that lifted us from the Clone Wars and the Republic's corruption. It's not the maker and the organizer and the fixer [...] The real purpose of the Empire is to give people like Vader the power to do anything they want. The bureaucracy, the ideology, the gleaming system we so admire--it accretes around that central core of cruelty solely because a bureaucracy allows us, the followers, to rationalize our participation through laws and protocols." How insightful this guy is!! Even while being a ranking member of the Imperial navy and someone of somewhat importance, he's able to realize the fraud of it all.
When asked by Tian where he sees himself in 30 years, he thinks about what the Empire would have achieved by that time, "Until at last the New Order was newer than all other things, the first thought, the first principle, from which all else proceeded, even truth itself. It would not be about anything, intend anything, mean anything. It would simply exist for the sake of power, absolute and unlimited, without constraint." Terrifying, yet true!
And then they get the call to enter the asteroid field so as to protect the star destroyer Executor from bombardment. And a decision must be made as to who stays on the bridge, exposed to asteroid attack, and who goes down to auxiliary control as a back up in case the bridge is hit. Canonhaus ends up staying on the bridge and sending Tian down below--he felt that no matter what decision he made, there was a possibility the young Commander could turn it against him. Regardless, he chooses her safety over his own and makes the noble play to stand guard over his ship from the bridge.
Trivia: Tabor Seitaron was a history professor at the Academy on Carida who had some very unconventional ways of thinking and thus was disappeared.
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"Amara Kel's Rules for TIE Pilot Survival (Probably)" by Django Wexler
There's also a flashback to Amara's squadron attacking a rebel supply base stationed at "a derelict Clone Wars-era deep-space installation" where the Rebels had been for some time. Is this in the comics and I just don't remember?? Is it new information?? What am I missing here??
Her rules include the following:
1. Don't get attached. Not to your fighter, officers, or squadmates.
2. Don't be a hero.
3. Don't go at them head-on.
4. Learn to love your machine. (a bit opposing to Rule #1, but as Amara puts it, "when you strip a starfighter down to the absolute bare minimum, what you're left with flies like a damn dream."
5. Never eject.
Amara calls each batch of brand new pilots (and they come through quite often) "cloudflies" (a species that only lives for a day, see Rule #1) until they prove themselves otherwise. In regards to TIEs versus Rebel ships, Amara makes a very good point about Rebel ships being insanely well equipped compared to TIEs, "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." (see Rule #3)
Theta Squadron consists of Amara Kel/Theta Four/Shadow, Theta Seven/Howlrunner, Theta Eleven/Clipper, Theta Thirteen/Dawn, Theta Eighteen/Flameskull, and Theta Twenty-Two/Shockwave. Lieutenant Obrax appears to be their commanding officer.
I promised queerness, remember?!? It comes in about halfway through the story as Amara meets Howl (Howlrunner) for the first time, "Howl wasn't a cloudfly. She'd been flying nearly as long as I had, already on her third tour. [...] 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." "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." After surviving the mission to the old Clone Wars outpost with Howl saving Amara's butt, "I was in the shower with Howl, kissing her as frantically as I've ever kissed anyone, and finding to my shocked delight that she was kissing me back just as thoroughly." Before the story ends, Amara even calls Howl her girlfriend!!
Trivia: Sleepwell pills = a whole night's rest in one quick nap. A howlrunner is "'a canid native to Kamar.' [...] 'Massive, nasty-looking thing with a skull for a face. Hunts humans, if it gets the chance.'"
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"The First Lesson" by Jim Zub
Here we get Yoda once again wishing that he was to train Luke and not Leia. I love that he was blindsided by having to train the other Skywalker and am glad that they re-iterated this aspect of his reality as part of canon. And the story even mentions how Yoda used his cane during the days of the Republic to trick his students into underestimating him!! So good. Also, Yoda recognizes R2-D2!! *my heart*
We start off with Yoda meditating on the Force that permeates Dagobah. He meditates on the following phrases with extended thoughts accompanying each one. "Harmony, we seek. Reality, we accept. The future, we behold. Feel the Force and go beyond." And then, "He was just one link in an eternal and immeasurable web built and broken among the stars. Broken? Why broken? That vile thought dropped into the stillness of the self, a jagged uneven thing with a strange gravity of its own that drew in tiny motes of fear and anger, disturbing the stream...a flash of darkness...a disturbance in the Force. Yoda could not remember the last time something had broken his concentration in such a manner. Was it a sign of inner doubt or an old fear he'd managed to keep hidden within? No. This was an outside presence. A presence he had not felt in many years. Potent and prophetic. Foreign, yet familiar. A Skywalker." Ooooh!
While at first thrown off by the brash, muddled mess that is Luke, Yoda shakes off his doubts and fears and decides that he will not try to teach the boy because "There is no try." He will instead do what he must and what he can to help mold this new Skywalker into a being of light who can help bring the galaxy back out of darkness.
Trivia: Some denizens of Dagobah include a spade-headed smooka, a skittering nharpira, and a ferocious dragonsnake.
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"Disturbance" by Mike Chen
This story was wack-a-doo and I absolutely loved it!!! We see Palpatine meditating on the Force deep within the Sith Temple buried below the now Imperial Palace (once Jedi Temple) of Coruscant. He rides the tides of the violent dark side and welcomes a vision brought on by the Force. In it he sees a young boy dressed in black with a red lightsaber who actually manages to Force-choke Palpatine, disperse his lightning, and kill the Emperor with a floating, spinning saber...and this boy?? It's Luke!! He also sees a Darth Vader who lives in the now-long-gone body of Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala, who in this vision has never died.
Turns out that this is not a vision in the strictest sense, but is more a dream of Vader's, a reality he wishes could be true and that he yearns for more than anything else.
There are some really cool descriptions of the dark side and how Sidious interacts with it when meditating, "the dark side demanded more. It worked amid the chaotic ocean of the Force, the very embodiment of life and death, past and future, everything and nothing. There was no symbiosis to it, only a never-ending battle for control over both the shadow and the light. Only then was it possible to bend it to one's will, to exploit its potential into the most powerful path." Spooky!! Apparently, the last great disturbance he felt was when Luke fired the unimaginable shot that detonated the first Death Star.
It takes Palpatine sitting with the vision and watching it play out to the very end (star destroyers blanketing the sky of Coruscant with Luke, Padme, and Anakin looking on to their Empire) before he realizes the connection that he has clumsily missed...Luke is Anakin's son! He comes to this conclusion because he recognizes the great "desire, the need for secrecy, not just a strategic endeavor but an explosion of emotion that ripped through the Force itself." And he asks himself, "How long had Vader known?"
All this plays out just before the holocall between Palpatine and Vader in which, "Vader remained still, and through the Force, Palpatine could feel the battle within him, the struggle to contain his desires. Despite the armor and machinery, Vader's heart still beat with the fire of Anakin Skywalker. A fire that Palpatine would put to the test." And I absolutely love how we're seeing all this play out in the comics now with Palpatine punishing Vader for going weak and expending his every effort on finding his son!
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"This is No Cave" by Catherynne M. Valente
This story was crazy weird, and I still don't know if I fully grasp what was going on. Some things I did understand included that Exogorths are like caddisflies (although the short story says snails which makes no sense), accreting debris around their body so that they have their own place of home and safety in the great expanse of space. So it wasn't an asteroid that was formed by physical means, but by biological means. In the Exogorth's words, "How unsorrowed the galaxy is to see me! It hurtles beautiful debris into my skull at the unchanging velocity of love, and gives me the gift of my skin." Also, Exogorths take in other lifeforms into their digestive tract and create atmospheres that allow them to live happily within the slug. Sy-O, the Exogorth that takes in the Falcon, contains Mynocks which it thinks are butterflies. And at just over a billion years old, it was still a child.
A few totally bizarre quotes from the narrative, "It was born on the thin breathless edge of the galaxy where light and warmth are legends told to frighten children. [...] Its birth-cluster ruptured in the secure shadow of a black dwarf star. Dead as any fallen tree in a forest, prickling with radiation instead of mushrooms. This was its first feast." "It learned to hum, the long, slow, closed-jaw song-language of its kind, a collective vibratory echolocation that was also a poem without beginning or end." "The Road of All Moons. The great rhythm of life: the infinitely repeating journey toward the Galactic Core and away again, out to the Rim, then back to the churning stew of life and energy, then the long sail into emptiness once more." Fascinating!! But also odd and confusing...
The Clew is when many Exogorths come together to show off the animals they have subsumed and mate. Unfortunately the Mynocks don't play very well in the Clew and Sy-O is left to be lonely once again. So the Clew is an all-together new explanation for the asteroid field around Hoth--going against what was said in previous stories in this collection about it being a newer system and so it was still forming. Frustrating, but interesting...from a certain point of view.
And then Sy-O eats the Falcon and feels Chewie, Han, and Leia as vibrant beings that it wishes to nurture and love for eternity. It even begins morphing the atmosphere inside of it to be breathable for them! So creepy, but kinda cute, too.
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So another knock it out of the park set that has me thinking, halfway through, that this one just might be better than the A New Hope edition...
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