Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View (From a Certain Point of View #1)

by Elizabeth Schaefer

Whatever Rogue One beamed us from Scarif, they really want it back.”

He would write three letters, one for his beloved wife, the other two for her to give to each of their young daughters when they were old enough to understand.

Ow lol

That was the most bitter irony of war: The greatest acts of love for your family were the ones that kept you apart from them.

“You have your orders, Captain. And my gratitude. For everything.” Leia raised her hand and touched it to Raymus’s cheek, giving him a warm, bittersweet smile both of affection and of sorrow. Both of them knew that this was the last time they would ever see each other.

That beautiful visage was as much a face of the enemy as any scarred, bearded one. Leia Organa was a killer. She looked at them and did not see the people, only the Empire they served. To her, Tarvyn Lareka had no name, no face, only a number. He was nothing more than a uniform of the hated foe, to be shot at and eliminated as quickly as possible.

Everyone thought being fleet logistics liaison (grade 4) on an Imperial Star Destroyer was a cushy job. But it took a lot of datawork to keep the crew of a massive ship like this fed and clothed and in fighting shape. Desk jobs in the Imperial Navy were no less stressful than combat ones.

Per Imperial Naval Regulation 132.CAT.ch(22), shooting an escape pod (other than during an armed engagement with an intensity classified as above Category V) required the gunnery captain to file a Form XTM-51-CT to explain why the action was necessary. This was to avoid giving those squawking senators an excuse to claim that the Imperial Navy engaged in war crimes.

Annoyed with rebel propaganda that showed Imperials to be poor shots—frankly, the stormtroopers could do with more targeting drills—fleet bureaucrats had issued a new policy that tied gunnery officers’ promotions to their kill ratios.

Aha, so maybe he didn’t know much about datawork, but he did know how to pay for a favor without being too obvious. “Maybe. But you know, I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to fire the guns on this thing. Even datawork wizards like pew-pew-pew, you know?”

The dunes of Tatooine look barren to most offworlders who, for some (typically illicit) reason or another, find themselves visiting. That appraisal isn’t completely unfair; life on Tatooine is as difficult as you’d expect from a planet where moisture is scarce to the point of deserving its own economy.

He would become an irreplaceable part of more and more designs, until, at long last, he could see fully the shape of the machine that was made for him.

The droid’s trail passed not far from a place, the chieftain said, where an entire camp of Tuskens had been mysteriously massacred in the night, many cycles before.

A’Yark started with surprise. “Back—to the gorge?” “Yes, in greater numbers.” He dusted himself off and looked to the chieftain.

All of these sing individual notes in the one great song of the Whills. No place is barren of the Force, and they who are one with the Force can always find the possibility of life.

Obi-Wan Kenobi’s hair has turned white. Lines have etched their traces along his forehead, around his blue eyes. He wears Jedi robes so worn and ragged as to be indistinguishable from the garb of the impoverished hermit he pretends to be. Most would walk past this man without a second glance. Yet while Qui-Gon perceives the physical realities of Obi-Wan’s appearance, he is not limited to human sight any longer. He also sees the confident general of the Clone Wars, the strong young Padawan who followed his master into battle, even the rebellious little boy at the Temple that no Master was in any hurry to train. They are all equally part of Obi-Wan, each stage of his existence vivid in this moment.

The droids comfort Qui-Gon somewhat, because they are familiar; the Force has even seen fit to bring these two back to the place where it all began. Time is a circle. The beginning is the end.

“Do you truly think your work has only just begun, my Padawan?” They have begun using that title between them again, in recognition of how much more Obi-Wan has yet to learn. It is strange, still, to think of death as only the beginning of wisdom.

Every person Obi-Wan ever truly loved—Anakin, Satine, Padmé, and Qui-Gon himself—came to a terrible end.

“You hadn’t even been knighted when I forced you to promise to train Anakin. Teaching a student so powerful, so old, so unused to our ways…that might’ve been beyond the reach of the greatest of us.

Only after Anakin’s fall did he push himself to emerge fully. It was the work of very nearly a decade. This he did for Obi-Wan; at least his Padawan did not have to spend his years in the desert entirely alone.

As Obi-Wan will soon learn, the most beautiful form of mastery is the art of letting go.

The day Ben Kenobi put that little baby in my arms was both the best and worst day of my life.

To most people, I’m just Luke Skywalker’s aunt Beru, the old lady who’s always bustling around the kitchen, pouring everyone blue milk.

I may be a country girl who’s never been offplanet, but even I’m aware that when a Jedi walks up to you and says, “Here, have a baby,” it’s not going to end well.

I was born to make people feel good when everything around them seemed just awful.

I was supposed to be off this dust ball yesterday, but I picked up trooper buzz that Vader was looking for a couple of runaway droids. Figured I’d collect the bounty and square myself with the headman at the same time. He’s still got a mad on over those rebel spies I crisped on Coruscant. Idiots came at me with ion disruptors. What, they thought I wouldn’t carry a weapon accelerator? Flash, boom, three tiny ash piles. Tried to collect and Lord “No Disintegrations!” refused to pay without bodies. My word’s not good enough, apparently. Reckoned I’d make up the loss by finding his droids and holding out for twice the reward.

Meanwhile Solo plays for time. Same old song and dance. “I’ll pay you tomorrow for a charter I’m taking today.”

But he looks at me and sees a hood, goggles, and a long snoot. Nothing more, nothing less.

Yet even knowing that the Empire has enslaved my planet and tried to turn me into a brainless drone, I need those credits. I need them more than I need righteousness. And besides, from my understanding of intergalactic history, a small assassination on a backward planet never did change the world.

So we geared up, put on our inefficient, technically archaic, and altogether butt-scratchingly uncomfortable armor, put on our absolute garbage-dump helmets that don’t let us see a dang thing, and loaded up these E-11s you’ve given us, which require one to aim as far as possible away from what one’s shooting at in order to have half a chance of hitting it.

Or long-distance choke-smashed by your beloved archwizard woo-woo-in-chief.

because the Rebel Alliance is really going to rely on an ancient freak and a teenager who needs a haircut to ferry their top-secret cargo around.

Look, I’m not bigoted or nothing, but the Kubaz are a trash species. Period, point blank, no exceptions.

Lmao

We follow orders. It’s the sum and extent of our existence. Say kill, and we will. Say die, and our arms fly up and take the blasterfire full on.

“I also want you to know that not everyone is courageous enough to stand up to the Empire, and those people, who we call collaborators, are just as bad as the Empire is. They may even be worse, because they should know better. It’s because of a collaborator that your mom isn’t here. His name was Corbin, and he had been our friend for years, until the Empire arrived. It happens so fast, Laina, you don’t even realize it’s happening. One day, your friends are eating breakfast with you in the canteen, and when it’s time for dinner, they’re wearing an Imperial uniform.”

Show a man a blaster, and he looked for a way to take it for himself and turn it on you. Tell a man he can fight in court, and nine times out of ten he’ll disappear just to avoid the tediousness.

I do not welcome Lord Vader quite literally attempting to shove his religious beliefs down my throat.

She might be broken and she might be under threat of execution, but she still hadn’t given anything away. Even to save her world.

They had known each other for so long, survived so much, but in all their private mythology never had she seen him look this way.

A shadow fell across the balcony, draping them both in cold and sudden darkness. She reached for Bail instinctively, looping her arm in his as they both turned in unison to face the valley. Breha shielded her eyes with the flat of her hand, gazing up at the sky and the massive object that moved slowly across the sun. In an instant, the thing had obscured the sun completely.

“I don’t think you’re a rebel,” he said. Aphra tried not to laugh. She was going to live. “I do think you’re trouble,” he said, “and I suspect the world would be better off without you.” Oh no. She wasn’t going to live. She was going to do the opposite of that.

“So, is this the first time you’ve executed someone?” she asked, voice breaking. “Don’t speak, prisoner,” said the trooper. His voice was unsteady, too. Okay. Aphra could work with that. Aphra laughed nervously, glancing slowly over her shoulder, and winked. “Or what are you going to do? Shoot me?”

“A planet doesn’t have a face,” she said. “It’d take a real monster to pull the trigger if Alderaan had a face.”

Ow! I crack my head on the threshold on my way into the control room.

My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I am dead. I know how that sounds. Crazy old Ben with his crazy old stories.

The humidifier purchased from Watto, at a highly inflated price, I should add.

And worst of all, Luke, as I am now, an old man, his face creased, his eyes haunted. He’s cut off from those who love him, consumed by regret and sorrow. It is too much to bear, a future I never want to see.

And the blanket on his bed, made from his old friend’s cloak. How long had it been since Qui-Gon Jinn had become one with the Force?

The squadron will race toward a space station armed with nightmarish weapons dreamed up by bitter old men.

There was nothing left of Alderaan but dust and memory, and what survivors remained spread out across the stars.