From A Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back by various (Part 5/8)
From A Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back by various (Part 5/8)
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"Lord Vader Will See You Now" by John Jackson Miller
Sloane is a Commodore at this point in the timeline, having been bumped down from Vice Admiral by letting Kanan Jarrus slip through her fingers on the planet Lahn. The only reason she still had command of a Star Destroyer was her patronage by Baron Danthe...who unfortunately is no longer in the Empire's favor and so as you'll see below, she gets shipped off to complete mundane tasks with people like Canonhaus stepping in for her (see my review of "The Final Order").
So we start with Sloane being escorted to Vader's chambers on the Executor with Piett waiting for her arrival. Of the two, only Piett knows that the cylindrical black chamber in the middle of the room houses Vader in meditation. And he repeatedly makes reference to Vader being able to hear all so she better behave. The nerve!!! Piett accuses Sloane of ignoring orders and she is beyond confused. Turns out that Piett thinks she intentionally took a long time coming back to her Star Destroyer--the Ultimatum--because she knew the ship was doomed and didn't want to die with her command. But, as Sloane reveals, there's so much more to her being late and it proves that the Millennium Falcon has escaped the asteroid field.
She was away from the Ultimatum because she had been sent off with Lieutenant Kanna Deltic to Fondor for "a weeks-long inspection tour of new shuttle technology." Bitter doesn't even cover how she feels about missing out on the Battle of Hoth! And being stuck with Deltic, a person she thinks of as precocious, certainly doesn't help matters (As an example of Deltic's personality--funny, yet cringey, Deltic says that the asteroid belt looks like "the Alderaan Welcome Center"). Upon Sloane being called back to her command, she can't find the ship amongst the asteroids!! While trying to make her way back, she gets a garbled signal revealing that the Ultimatum is lost...and her heart is broken. But she perseveres onward and discovers mynocks floating in space around one of the asteroids. Using a cargo collector, she captures the mynocks and discovers that they died not from "mawshock" or being expelled quickly from an Exogorth...but from blaster wounds!!! She even brings one of the mynocks in to Vader's chamber and shows Piett the blast marks. Piett is disgusted by the putrid, rotting creature.
Vader overhears the conversation of course, and Sloane gains the upperhand...and a new command!!! She gets the Vigilance which was supposed to be Piett's nephew's ship. Hahaha!! Take that you slimy human being.
I LOVED how Sloane is able to showcase her smarts, talent, and natural abilities by doing some surprising detective work while desperately searching for her ship.
Trivia: The Vandrayk Scale somehow measures the likelihood of an Exogorth's presence in an asteroid.
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"Vergence" by Tracy Deonn
I'm not kidding when I say the cave is one spooky character!! "Once they entered my realm, they were mine. I seized upon their shields. Slithered like a vine snake around their mental barriers. Exhumed the stone. I sought their thoughts no matter how buried, how polished. No matter where their secrets hid, I'd find them. Past their hopes, I struck like a scrange to the source of their pain." Through its interactions over the centuries, the cave even gained sentience!! "almost as alive as the bogwings, the pythons, the prowling and stomping elephoths." With this sentience came an ability to manipulate...
The cave meets its first and only equal in Yoda! It first comes across Yoda when Qui-Gon accompanies the Jedi master as seen in "The Clone Wars." Not only was Yoda the oldest being to ever cross the cave's path, but his thoughts were deeper, his memories more vast, and his fear was only for others. Also, Yoda kept returning to the cave, time and time again, whereas the other visitors had only ever dared come once. Finally Obi-Wan's ghostly form appears, imploring Yoda to teach Luke, and the cave plumbs Yoda's memories to find who this Luke is. He only sees, "Older memories. Flashes of a scowling, furious young man with light hair and blue--no, yellow--eyes. A woman in distress. A birthing chamber. An infant. Two. Yoda murmurs words from the then, in the now, 'To Tatooine, to his family send him.'" And the cave then recognizes that Luke must be the baby boy. Ahhh!!!! Every time these prequel connections are made to Original Trilogy situations, my heart freaking explodes!!
I LOVE this quote, "For this small being who felt fear for his Order, I showed loss on a scale beyond imagining. Bright blades of blue and green. One of purple. Clashing, sparking, and thrust through flesh. For this ancient being, whose fear held dread, I showed a hooded, faceless lord so great that I wished I had form so as to fall servant at his feet. Sidious. Sidious. Sidious." Even the Dagobah cave knows Palpatine is powerful beyond imagining!!
Post-acceptance of his need to train Luke, Yoda again enters the cave to re-experience all of his doubts and fears. "I create Dooku, his former Padawan, face twisted in corrupt passion. Yoda's failure to steer him away from the dark. I generate near-identical men in white armor, flowing in waves upon waves away from Yoda, under his feet. Marching to follow Yoda's orders. Yoda failing them as living beings, the lives he claimed to so honor. The young one rises from the dirt floor in a swirl of orange smoke and blue and white. Ahsoka. Turning away from the Council that Yoda led with arrogance. Yoda's failure to her bright light in the galaxy, ego and overconfidence leading the way. The now familiar shape of Anakin swells up from fire and smoke. His anger brewing for years and growing under Sidious. Yoda's failure to stop his training before it started, failure to detect his corruption as it happened. Yoda's failure to save him before he rose as a specter even the old Master had not faced." Yoda's response to all this?? "Old fears" with a smile! And oooh, boy does this make the cave angry!!
Later, when Yoda references Luke's failure at the cave, the cave itself is perturbed beyond belief, "But I am not a test. I am not a lesson. I am mist sweeping aside to show weakness. [...] I am a mirror. A revelation." And the cave continues thinking along this path until it realizes that it and Yoda have created a symbiotic alliance!!! Something the cave cannot get away from no matter how hard it tries.
Now I really wanna go back and read the comic where Kylo Ren goes to the cave with this new understanding of the place in mind!!
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"Tooth and Claw" by Michael Kogge
Bossk is after a Wookiee named Chainbreaker who is known for rescuing enslaved members of his species. The Trandoshan has set up a trap involving reconfiguring the prisoner transport schedule to capture Chainbreaker once and for all. But is Chainbreaker really who Bossk thinks he is?!?? I'm actually not gonna give this one away because the surprise is way too cool! But I will let you in on some quite disturbing Trandoshan life history and some quite unique Wookiee ship manufacturing details.
Trandoshans are born in clutches of eggs. It is expected that one of the clutch proves themselves the strongest by eating their other clutch-mates!! Yikes!! Bossk has been praised by his father, Cradossk, for doing just this when he was a hatchling. Unfortunately, this appears to be the only thing his father is proud of in Bossk's life. Poor guy!
Chainbreaker's gunship is made of wood!!! In the center of the ship, there was a nursery chamber where three wroshyr trees stood, branches intertwined, "full of leaves and dangling moss. Rodents scampered across the boughs and insects chirruped around the chamber as if it were night in a Kashyyyk forest." Surprisingly enough, the trees "provided wood for patching the hull and repairing other areas of the ship, along with offering a place of recreation and rest where the crew could climb, leap, swing, and sleep." Despite hating Chewbacca with every ounce of his being, Bossk gives that particular Wookiee credit for going without typical Wookiee engineering for so long.
The tie-in to Empire Strikes Back is that Bossk receives a message from a Lieutenant Masil Veit, communications officer of the Executor, requesting that Bossk make his way to the Star Destroyer for a briefing on the capture of the Millennium Falcon...another bounty Bossk is super eager to acquire. Apparently it was Bossk who brought Chewbacca in when the Wookiee became a prisoner on Mimban! And it seems there were other times Bossk was close to capturing Chewie and "his smart-mouthed sidekick" as well!! "the time when he found the pair trawling the sewage seas of Erub II for starship parts" "when he sabotaged their efforts to build a secret Wookiee colony on Gandolo IV" "the breakneck chase along the plasma floes of the Zusi hypertunnel that shattered the Hound's Tooth's class one generator" "the explosive blaster battle on the Jurzan spaceport that destroyed both Bossk's favorite cantina and the new starship he'd just purchased, the Bitemark" ...hence the disappointment of Bossk's father...
We also meet Rutallaroo, a renowned Wookiee war engineer who "apologized" for his crimes against the Empire and was used by the regime as an example of a "good Wookiee"...although the being had never truly "repented."
There was so much to this story that it absolutely deserved every page in its longer format. And goodness the surprise was perfect!!
Trivia: Bossk carries a Relby mortar rifle. The story takes place in the Rycep belt. There are apparently Bounty Hunter Guild elections...I wonder what the offices are... A couple of creatures from Trandosha include Doshian jellyfish and the Trandoshan hunting hound. Wasaka berries are a Wookiee favorite but poisonous to Trandoshans. The Scorch is the name for "the sunbaked plains" of Trandosha where Bossk was born and killed his clutchmates. Chewbacca's father is Attichitcuk. In Bossk's past, he once joined a Rodian posse on Goroth Prime, assisted a Quor'sav narcotics agent on Uaua, and killed the Mad Monks of Xo. Other, not so notable, bounties Bossk has collected on include the Gibbering Gran of Gibraal, Durgaagoo (Ploovo's right hand thug), and the masked monarch of Qotile. Wookiee's have a unique scent in every family unit.
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"Stet!" by Daniel Jose Older
Trivia: Zuckuss carries a GRS-1 snare rifle. A new sentient species are Bonbraks. Freerago, the proprietor of the diner, is a Gamorrean!!
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"Wait For It" by Zoraida Cordova
Apparently, Boba was working on collecting a bounty on a Sullustan "who'd broken a contract with Jabba the Hutt" when the communique from Vader came in, all but demanding his presence for a new job. Turns out he had to do a lot of waiting once arriving on the Executor which did not sit well with the man who in his head referred to Vader as "Lord Huff and Puff." Interestingly enough, he didn't recognize 4-LOM, Zuckuss, or IG-88 once all the bounty hunters were brought together.
We also get reference to Boba's revelation in the comics that the last name of the pilot who destroyed the first Death Star was "Skywalker" which I greatly appreciated as that is one of the most epic moments in comic book history!!
Once an Imperial officer announces the discovery of the Falcon, Boba just hangs around and waits to see what happens before taking off. He knows the smart move here is to scope out the situation fully. And he's proven correct as Needa is Force-choked to death for letting the Falcon once again get away. Boba tricks Bossk and Dengar into thinking he's willing to team up as Krayt's Claw again for one last run and provides them with phony coordinates to where he's sure he knows Han and Chewie are going. And of course, we all know, he doesn't go anywhere at all! Bossk and Dengar jet off into hyperspace and Boba is left to follow the Falcon from where he knows it's hidden by the refuse ejection panel.
I will admit that there are some really great lines in this one such as, "they still saw Fett not for what he was, but for who he had been. Little Boba angry at the world. Angry at everything and everyone who got in his way. A scrawny orphan who shared a face with a million others. The boy who swung his fists until either he or his opponent was bloodied and bruised." And, "Did they know that there was a reason Boba Fett always got his mark? There was a reason why there was a trail of bodies in his wake? Because he held on to that anger. He nurtured it like cinders in a growing flame. He taught his anger to aim, to speak, to be the scream that he would never finish. Because every target was and would always be the Jedi who got away--the man who murdered his father." Wow!! I can almost feel empathy for Boba Fett here...but no...his actions in the current "Bounty Hunters" long-run comic series preclude that from happening.
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So another great set with some real winners!! I'm through the next set of five and am still loving it all!
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