The Ghosts of Hoth: A Star Wars Fan Fiction (T)

This is a rough sketch of a short story idea I had way back when that is set within the Star Wars universe. I'm in the mood this week, taking a slight reprieve from working on my novel, so this is what I'm looking at currently. I know this isn't much, just a quick intro to the setting, but more will be on the way somewhere down the line.

Co-Written by Jake and Tiffany McBride

Echo Base. Fifty-four years ago. I was only eighteen, barely able to see over the trenches. I remember cold. A deep, freezing cold that settled deep in your bones, corroded the lungs, turned rifles into twigs, snapped unprotected digits clean off. Sweeping tundras of white, laced with icy outcrops, bored out by rampant wampas.

The ice desert.

I’m an old man now, withered by war and warring, tired of the endless exploits of our protectors. In this galaxy gone mad time and time again, I found myself chained to the events of history as they unfolded around me. Black Sun. Yavin. Endor. Thrawn. The Yuuzhan Vong – I had seen it all. But nothing was etched in my mind, nothing so deeply rooted as that burrow in the ice: Echo Base. As fresh as the day before, as jarring as those decades long since passed, I could still remember the smell of it; the sweat, blood, and tears. The dangling icicles. The reeking of the Tauntauns.

The pounding thunder of the AT-ATs overhead.

I broke away from my thoughts as a blinking light upon the dash grabbed my attention. The pale blues and whites of the hyperspace tunnel before me washed through my eyes, reminding me all too well of what was already on my mind.

“Okay, I’m going to bring us back into realspace,” the pilot, Sheena Salix, announced to the cabin. “We should have a clean view of the planet in just a few moments.”

I wanted to look away from the azure tunnel ahead of me, to pretend it wasn’t there, but could not. I reached into my pocket and gripped a small trinket I had brought with me, but kept it hidden from the others.

“How soon till we can land?” That was the prospector, Janus Arrelian, who sat behind me – our patron for this bantha circus. “Within the hour, I would hope.”

Sheena kept her eyes on her controls, showing remarkable patience with a man who had none, especially for being so young and barely out of the academy. “Soon enough.”

“Well, I would hope so.” Janus got up out of his seat and left the main cabin. “I’ll go round up the others and have them start readying their gear. I want camp and command ready before sunset!”

Sheena shook her head and turned to me as soon as Janus was out of earshot. “Anything for a small fortune, eh, Devon?”

I smiled in return. I wasn’t after the credits – didn’t need ‘em. Actually, I didn’t know why I came. By all reason and right I should have said no, but I didn’t.

I must be getting old or something.

“Okay then, let’s do this.” Sheena reached out and gripped the accelerator, checking the information on the navicomputer to make sure her drop-out would be as precise as possible. “Dropping out of hyperspace in five...four...three....”

I frowned – I hated countdowns.

“Two...one...and...mark!”

With a gentle pull back of her wrist, the streaking stars passing by the ships viewport shrunk back into alignment and the Winter Dawn smoothly cruised into the system, as quiet as a retrofitted Sith Infiltrator could.

“Engaging stealth systems.” Sheena reached up to the controls above her and flipped a couple of switches, the Stygium crystals in the bow of the ship making it invisible to scanners.

Not that there would be any out here anyway.

Adjusting my eyes from the six hours of the hyperspace tunnel view, suddenly, to the left of me, that pale blue orb came into sight. I sighed, squeezing the trinket in my pocket, sweat forming on my brow.

Hoth. The barren wasteland of a dark history. After half a century of a vow left unbroken until this day, here we were.

I was back.

The winds of Hoth sent old, familiar chills under my upturned collar like ghostly fingers. Ice fragments chewed at my nose and eyelids until they burned. I wondered why I thought that scouring this hellish planet for tales of a long-forgotten rebellion seemed like such a good idea yesterday before we left Bespin.

I glanced down at the blue directional indicator on the transmission radar strapped around my neck. I knew I was trudging through the two feet of newly and still falling snow toward the transmission that would lead me to my final goal, and for a moment, despite the cold that even seemed to penetrate my heavily-reinforced parka, I felt the slightest adrenaline spike from my heart to the tips of my fingers. For a short distance I picked up speed, and pulled the heavy equipment sleigh behind me faster, eager to find some shelter.

I would have glanced back to check on the expensive haul of archaeological gear and the others in the party, but would run the risk of receiving the planet’s icy wrath to my face instead of my posterior.

My electronic jewelry began to emit a series of loud beeps that indicated that we had reached fifty metros from the intended dig site, also known as the predestined place to set up camp. Janus, in his incredulity, wanted to camp directly inside Echo base, ‘close to the action’, as he had put it, though I had to remind him that the base had been destroyed shortly after the empire attacked and that there was little chance that there would be any given space safe to stay in for long.

I sighed at the thought, though at least it kept my mind off the cold. He was a stubborn, unpleasant little man, many times acting or speaking before considering the consequences, though he paid well and had deep connections to get the equipment and backdoor passes we needed. Hoth was a historical site in the state of being preserved, after all.

Twenty-five metros. I heard that albino Wookiee, Albrackish, growling something into the wind a ways back. I smiled to myself, remembering that I had forgotten to switch on my translatacomp after we had hit planet-side. If there was one thing that drove me nuts it was the monotone translations of Shyriiwook in the ear. All he ever did was complain anyway, so I left it off, content to not understand a word he was saying.

When we hit ten metros distance, I slowed and let the others catch up, my heart racing as a change in the terrain began to take shape. The never-ending stretch of white upon white began to form into a rise, the terrain after hidden behind the cusp. A line of frost-covered plates and memorials began to come into view, some vertical, some upon the ground with solar-powered deicers to keep them forever visible. I knew this place. As if I had never left, the memory was still fresh.

Janus came first, running up the hill as if his life depended upon it, followed by the rest of the crew: the Wookiee, who happened to be another veteran of Hoth, Beryl Greer, our on-board archaeologist, and Gurner Halidon, our ordinance manager and structural engineer, each pulling a sled of their respective equipment. Sheena was staying on the Winter Dawn up in orbit, ready to swoop down and pick us up in case we were discovered by the government or other looters.

I stopped at one particular plate, one left by a certain Wilhelmina Landry, with an ode to her fallen brother inscribed upon what seemed to be a shred of hull from a snowspeeder. It’s words were simple, as if written by a child, but they still made the air seem colder as I read.

Beryl, too, stopped at a monument to the fallen, meticulously eying it through her orange-shaded goggles, her dark hair flapping out from underneath her hood.

“Would you look at that.” Janus interrupted our moment of silence for the dead, him having passed the memorials entirely and walked up to the edge.

Grunting my displeasure, I moved on and joined him. Spread out below us, some thirty metros down, was the remains of Echo Base, frozen in the ice. Now but a large indent littered with debris, the billowing snows had been slowly taking back the tunnels, packing them back up, reverting the site to it’s original form. Another thirty years of inclement weather and all that would remain is a depression in the ice.

The planet wanted to forget too.

“There,” I said, pointing a finger to the south end of the ruins. “In the hollow of that overhang is where we should camp. It won’t stave off the cold, but at least it’ll lessen the elements.”

Albrackish stepped next to me, the long white hairs on his arms rippling in the wind. “We should have brought a mining laser.”

Damn. Janus had his translatacomp switched on. And on loudspeaker, no less.

“These will do just fine.” Gurner patted a hand on his sled, referring to the charges he had brought, ranging from the size of a seed to that of a Hutt’s second liver. “I could plant one in your eye to destroy a bile worm and you could still see straight after, so don’t worry about it.”

“Fine, but wait until I’m far away before you go and get yourself crushed by falling ice.”

“Quiet!” Janus didn’t seem to be in the mood, presuming he ever had a good one. “All of you! You have jobs to do, and you’ve already been paid. So...what are you waiting for? Get to it!”

Everyone relenting, mostly because we wanted out of the cold, we all picked up our frozen feet and dragged our sleds on, heading down the winding tail of the ice wall to the bottom to set up camp for the night.

I shoved my sled into the protective embrace of my temporary shelter, pulling the cold-resistant fabric over it to protect Beryl’s sensitive gear from the icy wind. The thermal packs that we had stuffed into the sleds and our parkas had begun to run out of power and die, the true cold now beginning to settle in.

I glanced around, seeing if everyone was set as well. Beryl and Albrackish were already inside their tents warming up, them having been on digs or military outfits before, but Janus and Gurner weren’t so lucky as to have experience in harsh environments; places that can kill in minutes, not hours. Gurner was just sitting there staring at the poles and strips of fabric, no doubt reverse-engineering them into something more efficient, letting the wind and snow form icicles on his mustache. And Janus, the nerf herder, hadn’t even begun. He was fixated on his directional locator, watching it incessantly beep with the phantom transmission now but two-hundred metros away, occasionally glancing at the tumbled ruin of what was once Echo Base that lay before us.

I had half a mind to let him freeze, but relented – he had all the paperwork and contacts, legit and no, to get us out of a brig in case we were caught.

“Hey Janus,” I said, breaking his train of thought as carefully as I could manage. “Need help with your shelter? The sun’s going down – the temperature’s going to drop fifty degrees in about ten minutes.”

“What do you think it is, Devon?” Janus never removed his eyes from the locator and the ruins, the pulse of it seeming to mesmerize him. “What do you think is calling us...from the depths of the past.”

I shrugged. “I’m sure it’s just some faulty piece of rebel tech that decided it wanted to turn itself back on. Or maybe a crushed astromech droid’s emergency beacon that shorted out. Our stuff never was top of the line.”

Janus didn’t respond.

“But hey...I’ve been wondering.” I started to assemble his tent, knowing he would probably make me anyway. “How is it that no one else has found this? I mean, I would have assumed that the alliance would have capitol ships swarming this place hours after it started going off.”

“Credits, Devon. Lot’s and lot’s of credits.” Janus smiled. “And a bit of luck. Had Hoth been in the inner core, for sure it would have been noticed by amateur radio operators. But out here...in the badlands of the galaxy...nobody cares.” He stood up, stretching his stiffening knees. “It’s a low-band frequency, hardly powerful enough to escape the system, let alone the Anoat Sector, and it was coded in an outdated form that the alliance doesn’t officially recognize or scan for anymore. The only people that use those bands anymore are pirates, bounty hunters, and kids screwing around in their dad’s garages.”

I raised an eyebrow, using the spring-loaded stake driver to secure his shelter to the ice. “And how you got it? Just passing through, thought you would scan for archaic signals from the grave?”

“It just so happened that I stumbled upon a smuggler who owed me one, and he offered me this information in exchange for me not turning him in to the authorities – he tried to steal from me, the fool. I guess he knew about the signal for years but let it alone, thinking it might save his life one day if nobody else found it.” Janus grinned with a hint of sly devilry. “And so it did...until he tried to take it back.”

“Once a thief, always a thief.” I stated my opinion clearly – I had no love for fringe raiders or anyone who would cheat another just for the sake of useless credits.

“Indeed.” Janus walked over to his sled, which was unsurprisingly half the size as the rest of ours, and pulled it near the tent. “Ready yet?”

I bit my tongue, keeping the curses and my temper at bay. “Yea.”

Glancing over to see that Gurner did indeed get his up and ready, I returned to my shelter for the night, half-wishing I didn’t help that pus-bag, Janus, but decided it was my good deed for the day. Pulling the heavy fabric closed, feeling the heat radiating from my thermal generator, I sighed a breath of relief and shed the layers of winter gear.

“Devon?” Beryl’s Coruscanti-accented voice came through on my communicator, though it seemed hushed.

“Yea?” I glanced at the silvery box on my wrist, seeing that Beryl was using an encrypted channel for some reason – only her and I were in on this conversation.

“Did all my equipment make it in alright?”

I glanced at the sled, not really checking but assuming. “Seems fine.”

“Good.” Beryl had a leading tone in her voice, as if she wanted me to say something.

“I don’t know, Doctor Greer.”

“Hmm?” She played the part of the innocent.

“Janus didn’t say a word. Either he’s leading us on, or he really doesn’t know what’s down there. Judging by what I know of him so far....” I left it at that.

“Very well, Devon. Have a good night’s rest – I’ll see you topside after sunrise.”

“Yea.”

I switched my communicator off, content to spend my first night back on Hoth in peace. I knew exactly where we were: right above where the long, narrow trenches outside the main entrance once stood. Where the heaviest of the fighting had occurred. Where the 501st’ Snowtrooper detachment had stormed the line immediately after we had been shredded to bits by the AT-ATs. They had been long-since filled in by the planets interminable snowstorms, but I couldn’t forget.

Fifty-four years later, and I still couldn’t forget.

Pulling my blankets close as I laid down on my heated pad, I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, knowing full well it wouldn’t come easy.

The last blast Janus released on the epidermis of the planet left a pock scar the size of Coruscant’s ninth district, and was nearly as ugly. Or maybe ugly just came from the idea of the return back to fragging manual labor.

Gurner wasn’t interested in working. Right now he was more engrossed with pouting about like a petulant child on the outskirts of the dig site. Earlier, Janus and he were fighting about the charges that had been set off without the engineer’s go-ahead. Something about it being unprofessional, especially for an archaeologist.

I rolled over a large chunk of white ice and could see something just under the snow. My fingers were shaking at the thought of finding some part of my past buried beneath me. The idea almost made my past seem more real. This was still a few metros too high from the signal we were searching for, but as I reminded Janus earlier that morning, I didn’t remember the base having levels any deeper than the storage areas.

I didn’t want to damage whatever it was that I had found, in case it was something important. I should have called for Janus to come have a look first, but something made me hate letting that rotting, piranha-beetle-infested nerf touch anything on this planet. I felt that anything this planet regurgitated was a part of me and the veterans that fought here, and that Janus was invading my sacred ground.

After a moment, the ice revealed its inner trophy to me and I sat on my knees, motionless and horrified. Sacred ground. I tried not to let it bother me, but it did, and I felt the warm trickle drop from my eye and sit trapped in my goggles as I scooped the snow back over the mummified remains of a fallen comrade, his lifeless eyes frozen open, staring right at me.

“Devon?” Beryl had been watching from the other side, distracted from her making of sketches of the near ice formations.

I tried to blink the emotion away, to take my sight off of him, but they wouldn’t budge. Seeing someone like that, dead for over half a century and yet preserved so perfectly in his beige and white uniform, made the cold against the outside of my parka that more invasive.

Tyre. The name upon his parka shone clean through the ice as if it were glass. Judging by the rank insignias, he was a private – the same as me when I was on Hoth. He was young, probably in his early twenties, with a dark mustache that he had just started to grow out.

Tyre. My veins burned with fire, my gut wrenched, and I had to fight to keep my hands from shaking.

I remembered this man.

“Find something?” Janus piped up from the rear of the room, him still meddling with Gurner’s sled of charges, inexpertly trying to choose which one to attempt next.

“No.” I stood up and kicked the snow back over the shallow grave, ensuring it would remain hidden from others’s unwelcome scrutiny. “I thought I saw something, but it was just a break in the ice.”

“Well, keep your eyes open!” Janus chided. “There could be lots of things of value still down in here – might as well keep this trip profitable, especially if we don’t find whatever it is we are after. Am I right?”

“Yea.” I checked one last time, making sure Tyre would stay out of site.

Ollerus. His first name was Ollerus.

“There.” Albrackish lifted a hairy, ice clump-infested arm and pointed toward a faint gap in the near wall, him having been removing most of the chunks of rubble himself. “A gap in the wall.”

Janus came bounding over the mounds of glacial debris and shoved his nose in the crevice. Unable to see inside, he reached up and brushed the snow off the flashlight strapped to his forehead and shone the beam inward.

“Someone bring me another charge!” He kept his face in the hole. “Now please!”

Beryl glanced over to Gurner, who promptly turned his head away. “If he wants to blow an arm off, let him. But I won’t be the one held responsible for letting an untrained novice handle these packs – I’ll have no part in any of this until he backs off and let’s me do my job, preferably before he gets us all killed.”

Janus grumbled something unintelligible and pulled away from the wall. “Fine. You still want to get paid? Would rather not get marooned here? Then open this damn wall!”

I tried not to laugh. If any one was going to get marooned....

Content to have control over his specialty, Gurner walked up to the wall and eyed it over, gently tapping it with his fingers to check for depth.

“Well?” Janus was getting both excited and impatient, even for him. “One kilo? Two?”

"How about none?" Gurner motioned to Albrackish and pointed to a nondescript portion of the wall. “There.”

With a growl, the white Wookiee smashed his fist into the ice at the point designated, a fairly large portion of the wall breaking loose and tumbling to the ground. The icy mist settling, the find revealed a man-made tunnel, encased in thick, black plasteel, with a large, solid door at the end. To the right off the door was the control panel, curiously still glowing.

My head tilted a little to the side. It still had power? I knew for a fact, due to Janus’ carpet bombing earlier that day, that the generators for the base had long since been destroyed. A brainlessly placed charge by the man made double sure of that and had buried Albrackish up to his waist in show and electrical parts.

Janus, without thought, quickly moved into the tunnel and up to the door, gawking at it with his no-doubt perplexed aptitude for science. “Wha...what is this?” He turned to me. “Devon, what is this?”

I was half tempted to say ‘a door’, but held my tongue. “Huh...I don’t ever remember there being anything being manufactured like this.” I reached out and felt the cold alloys that comprised the wall. “Plasteel; this stuff wasn’t cheap, nor easy to come by back then. There’s no way the alliance would have used this, let alone brought it to Hoth where it would more than likely have to be left behind.”

Beryl stepped in. “Are you sure, Devon? Perhaps it could have been part of an old cruiser that was stripped for parts for construction of the base? The rebellion did cannibalize anything they could find for their projects.”

Gurner grunted. “No shipyard would construct something like this. Starships use interchangeable parts for cost reduction and simplicity. Look.” He pointed at the wall, running his fingers up and down. “This entire tunnel is solid, without seams....” He tapped on the wall. “And, judging by the thickness, heavier than an ion engine. It was most definitely smelted and cured here, else there would be signs of it’s construction or having been moved.”

I pondered the thought. Why would this be here? What could have possibly been so important as to have such a solid defense built up around it?

I let the thought pass and readied my nerves as Albrackish walked up to the keypad with his slicing gear, all of us unsure of what to expect behind the hidden black door.

The tightly sealed doors hissed as they opened and the suction from the vacuum between the two rooms made a hollow thump sound. Whatever this room contained, it was beyond my expertise. We were all standing there staring into the now-open doorway, each breathing in minimal stutters. It looked and smelled like a med lab with draping hoses, examination tables, and an endless array of clear liquid filled vats of some unknown substance.

“Hey!” Sheena had walked up behind us, her soft boots noiseless upon the ice.

Albrackish jumped a good foot and began howling in Sheena’s direction, “What’s wrong with you, Woman? Don’t sneak up on a creature twice your size, especially when you’re scent is being masked!”

I had forgotten than Janus had the ship brought down, deciding last minute that we would be more obvious with a ship orbiting a barren planet, so I was nearly as startled as the white beast.

“Alright, alright, simmer down Al, I just needed some help with the left engine couplings yesterday and Gurner said he’d help me figure something out, because I’m running out of parts that last more than 24 hours. If we can’t figure anything out, I’m going to have to jump back to Bespin to get Winter Dawn refitted. That leaves you guys without an escape from this ice cube.”

Gurner nodded. “Yes, you’re right, I’ll go have a look and see if I can come up with something while the others look into this. It doesn’t matter what riches we find if we can’t haul them back. Excuse me, fellows.”

Janus clapped his gloved hands together. “Well, lets take a look then, shall we?”

We all watched as Janus took the first few steps into the room, and suddenly the deathly silence transformed into the sounds of working machines, metal and oil pumping rigorously.

“Activating emergency stasis reagents,” came a digital voice from the speakers in the ceiling of the room.

Albrackish growled, “What did you touch?”

Janus made his hands into fists as he froze three steps in. “I didn’t touch anything you moronic, over-grown, Kowakian monkey-lizard!”

As Albrackish roared on about what horrible things he was going to do to Janus and how he was a warrior, not a cowardly creature that found its food already rotting, I watched the massive pistons on either sides of the room firing faster and faster. There was some sort of altar or dias in the center of the room and steam was slowly starting to roll forth from beneath it. Gears were rattling as they turned, creaking from laying for so long unused.

I barely heard Beryl over the yelling. “It’s waking her up.”

I looked over at the doctor, who was watching as what I thought was a dias or altar began to upright itself. My eyes narrowed on the object, barely able to see what was inside. Now what Beryl was saying started making sense

It was a woman.

Janus and Al were quiet now, both staring at the encased human as well. She looked as if she were resting in a deathly pose, her arms crossed over her breasts that would otherwise be exposed, her ankles, one crossed over the other, and her head tilted to one side. Her dark curling tendrils of hair draped all on one side, hiding their length behind her back. There was a line hooked into her arm with a needle, and tubes in her nose.

Only when he spoke did I realize Gurner and Sheena hadn’t left. “I don’t get it...where is the power coming from?”

“Her,” the computer responded as if it were the most logical explanation in the galaxy.

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck crawl. My heart rate accelerated and I felt something I hadn’t felt since I retired from the New Republic Navy.

I had a bad feeling about this.

I looked over at Janus, whose eyes were transfixed on the woman.... No, not transfixed. “Janus?” Choking.

He collapsed to his knees and fell to the ground, his hands clawing at some unseen entity constricting his airway. My training never ebbing away, even after all these long years, my brain switched to survival mode. “Al! Close the door, close the door!” My eyes combed my surroundings, looking for anything I could use as a weapon. Glinting against the snow, I ran back and grabbed an ice drill, then went back to the entryway to the lab. I held the drill out in front of me as if it would help me from what ever invisible substance or power that had killed Janus. I was pretty sure he was dead.

I spared a glance at Al and Sheena, who were both frantically working at the control panel. “Al! Close the fragging door!!”

“We can’t get it to close! It opened so easy!”

The doors shuddered and groaned, seemingly fighting the commands that were given.

I heard a pop and a slow hiss that diminished and my head snapped back to what was going on in front of me. The capsule, now completely upright, had opened and the woman’s head was pressing against the plasteel capsule. I watched as her body shook as if in seizure and she inhaled deeply, painfully. Her eyelids slowly parted, revealing liquid blue eyes, akin to electrical fire, and she lifted her hands as if to help move her head, but she was too weak.

Was whatever had taken Janus trying to take her, or was she what happened to Janus? Her deathly white pallor was a stark contrast to her sienna locks, framing those fiery eyes that lifted and looked right at me.

My vision blurred. I wondered of death and its smoky cirrus, and the many times I had evaded its grasp. It didn’t feel like dying. Then I could see again. I stood there, disoriented as I watched Janus hauling the last of the equipment out of the lab.

Suddenly confused, I wondered what had happened to me, and how I could have imagined such horrible things. Then I saw myself walking up to Janus.

“You can set the charges now, that was the last of it,” the prospector told the other me.

I felt paralyzed and invisible as I tried to talk to the others – all I could do was watch.

“Where’s Albrackish?” the other me asked.

“Out packing the supply truck already,” he answered dismissively.

We, I mean he and the other me, both turned and left.

My vision blurred again, and returned once more after a moment.

I definitely wasn’t in the laboratory anymore. I watched native Wookiees swinging from tree to tree all decorated colorful fabrics, howling a mournful song. I looked to a tree bridge, where I saw a female Wookiee howling the loudest as she pulled her fur from her ceremonial painted face.

The snapshots of my visions changed again. I saw me drinking. I looked like hell. My beard had grown out a full three inches, gnarled and clumped together like a thicket of wild foliage. I was sprawled across the greeting room floor of my Corellian apartment, that looked as bad as the streets of the Corellian cities. Alcohol tankards littered the floor, along with half eaten food, spoiled and rotting. I watched my chest heave up and down as I lay sleeping in a drunken stupor. Slowly the rhythm of my lungs eased and stopped. Alcohol poisoning.

Then I saw Janus, laughing in a bar with a friend. He slapped his friend on the back and proudly declared, “Yeah, so the old hole holder trapped the Wookiee in the back of the cave! The stupid walking piece of lint probably suffocated after the first two hours if he wasn’t initially crushed. One of my better ideas. The galaxy is one Wookiee less and I didn’t have to share as much of the profits!”

His friend laughed.

I felt the venom of angry adrenaline coursing through my veins.

Then I saw the woman with the pure electric blue eyes, and I saw scientists examining her. She was getting angry.

I listened to her as she sputtered and tried to talk to them, to scream at them, but she was having a hard time getting the words out. Then she finally managed, followed by some flying spittle. “Stop! No!”

”It should be easy enough to replicate, Sir,” one of the scientists were saying.

“Can’t.... You.... “ she said and began to shake and tremor.

My image of her zoomed out and disappeared under a roof, then under a city, then under a continent and suddenly my view was from space, looking down at the planet. I watched as the blue-green sphere collapsed and exploded into the darkness of infinity. Debris blew past me and into the nearby orbiting satellites, wreaking more havoc and spewing into the far reaches of the galaxy like a collapsing star becoming a black hole.

My vision blurred and I was back in the hall again, and having forgotten I was holding the drill, I listened as it clattered to the floor.

“What are you thinking?” I heard the voice of Beryl next to me, but it seemed distant now.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s going... to... kill us. We need to find a way to control it!”

“No.” I shook my head, understanding now. “She saved us.”

“You’re out of your mind!”

I didn’t even glance Beryl’s way, I was fixated on the woman in front of us and what she had done. I had heard of powerful Jedi using the force to see the past and future, but I had never heard of them showing it to someone else.

“Who are you?” I asked her.

Her voice was harsh as if her throat was swollen. “No one. No.... Someone.” She shuddered. “Eh...many.”

I looked at Beryl and she didn’t even flinch. Was she expecting that sort of answer? I definitely wasn’t.

The woman lifted her head upright in the box and yanked the needle from her vein, then the tubes from her nose. She looked at me as she seemed to be resting again.

“Are you cold?” I wondered about finding her some clothing.

She smiled at me. Was that a yes or a no?

Finally she whispered, “No.”

Sheena and Albrackish were staring now. Everyone’s attention was on the woman, the steady hums of their slicing tools and the whirr of the door trying to move having stopped.

Turning back to the woman, I examined her nude body for a moment. “You should be.”

She smiled again for a moment, her small sly smile, “This...body.... Many...no,” she gasped. She talked like an android with crossed wires in its cerebral cortex, uncertain of what it wanted to communicate.

I dared move a step closer, my hands up in a friendly manner, as to not agitate this...being. “How about a name? Do you have a name?”

“What...the stars....” She lifted her head. It was then that I noticed she was exceptionally tall and spindly, her eyes slightly higher from the ground than mine, forcing me too look upward as I neared. “Innumerable....”

Beryl reached out for my arm, but missed as I fully entered the room, her unable to work up the courage to do the same. “Devon, don’t! We have to find some way to contain her, before she kills again! Look at what she did to Janus!”

The woman spoke sidelong toward Beryl, though her eyes remained frozen upon me. “One...vessel.... Voices...legion. I...we...you, no....” Her eyes suddenly snapped to Beryl. “Clouds of gray.”

She tried to stand upright with her own strength, pushing against the capsule, but fell and stumbled. Me, uncertain of my own motives at the time, moved in and caught her before she hit the ground. I nearly pulled back in fright – her skin was as cold as the icy floor.

Sheena approached with a silvery weather blanket, but the woman only smiled again. “Old soul,” she whispered, her eyes passing through me like wind through the trees. “In...young universe.” She reached out with a frigid hand, delicately sprinkled with demure flecks of condensation, and held the side of my face, sending chills throughout my body. “Only two...no.... Only...two will...escape.”

I nearly dropped her, half tempted to run for my life at those words. I never really trusted in the ways of those with the gift, never really gave it much thought; superstition and alley magic shows. But at that very moment, without a shred of doubt left in me, I had become a believer.

All of us glanced at one another: me, Beryl, Albrackish, and Sheena, each taking heed at this strange being’s words and pondering each other’s motives. Unbinding myself from her inescapable enchantment, the thought entered my mind: where was Gurner?

“There.” The woman pulled herself up from my arms in a manner most unnatural, as if she were being lifted, her strength recovering faster than anything I had ever before seen. “You...yes...colors.” She looked down, me, being the old fool that I am, still upon my knees. “We...must rest. All...of...us.”

I stood up, backing away a couple of steps.

Beryl moved in. “We should head to the surface, Devon – it’s sure to be getting dark out by now.” She placed a gloved hand on my shoulder, her eyes never leaving the entity. “We should head back to camp and prep the ship.”

“What about...her?” Sheena asked.

“She should come with us, if she so desires.” Beryl smiled, the kind of subtle smile only a purebred Coruscanti can produce. “I am sure we could spare the room, now that we are minus one passenger.”

I had to think on that for a moment. Did Beryl just say what I thought she said? And I thought Hoth was cold. She was up to something, her cautionary barking from before now shifted into a nonchalant levity.

Albrackish, being a proper superstitious Wookiee, had seen enough. Without another word out, he took off to get the ship repaired, wanting to get off the planet as fast as possible.

“Al!” Sheena called after him, but was unable to sway his long strides. “Al, get back here!”

The strength we had in numbers, especially with one of those numbers being over two and a half meters tall, had crumbled. Sheena took off first, more concerned about the Wookiee meddling with her ship than anything, followed by Beryl, who cooly walked off as if she had not a care in the world. I looked one last time at the woman, her head slightly tilted to one side, those magnetic eyes staring at me, seemingly intrigued.

I left it at that and joined the others in their flight to the planet’s surface, knowing full well that it was going to be a long night.

The shearing cold of flying ice shredded against my face and goggles, no doubt tearing the exposed skin open, though it was so numb that there was no way I could tell. At these temperatures, blood coagulated on the spot, both a blessing and a curse. The storm had set in upon us just as we left the confines of Echo Base, a fury that I don’t think I had ever witnessed. I had seen elemental storms of lightning and sand before, but nothing like this.

Albrackish was far ahead when it hit, the white furball blindly racing into the wall of ice as we retreated back into the relative safety of the base. All three of us humans huddled behind the chiseled walls, sticking together for warmth. Base camp was no doubt obliterated, our survival gear and tents buried into twisted wrecks, and we had only brought enough supplies to last us a couple of days inside.

I kicked myself – all the supplies were back near that room. We’d have to go back soon if we were to survive.

“What’re we gonna do?” Sheena said as she clung to me for warmth, her coat only meant for a days outing on the surface, not prolonged exposure.

“We have to go back down and get the supply sled,” I said, running my tongue over the front of my cold teeth. “It’s our only chance.”

“Why do we not simply have her help us?” Beryl suggested. “She seems powerful. Maybe she can shield us from the storm while we make it back to the ship.”

“Are you kidding me?” Sheena contested. “That thing? On my ship?”

“That’s assuming a lot.” I stuck my gloved hands under my armpits, though it didn’t seem to help. “Who knows if the storm isn’t worse where the Winter Dawn is. For all we know, she could be half-buried or the core frozen out.”

“If Al got there in time, that wouldn’t be a problem, even for him,” Sheena said. “All he’d have to do is fire up the auxiliary heating system around the core and the gel layer. Then his warm and toasty receding hairline could come pick us up.”

“You anticipate he will?” Beryl was skeptical. “Wookiees only live to serve themselves. You saw how he ran and left us here with her. Supposing he made it to the ship, he’s probably to Bespin by now, enjoying a warm glass of Juri Juice.”

“And Gurner wouldn’t?” I shook my head. Humans were just as meatheaded as the rest of the galaxy.

“Mister Halidon was a....”

Beryl cut off as a scuttling noise came from somewhere deep in the base, a low moaning following soon after. All three of us looked at each other and then back outside, only to see a wall of darkening white still blanketing the entrance to the base.

I stood up, my knees aching from the dropping temperature. I pulled Sheena to her feet, her small frame already starting to show the stress of the cold, but let Beryl take care of herself. “We go back for the sled. It’s our only chance.”

“But....” Sheena was about to protest, but I cut her off with a raised hand.

“If she doesn’t kill us, the cold will. Storms like this can last for hours. Days even. If we don’t get the supplies on the sled, we’ll be dead well before morning.”

“Devon is right.” Beryl found a long, serrated piece of steel, cumbersomely wielding it like a spear. “We go back, or we might as well walk out into that storm and get it over with. Maybe we can find something to rig up a distress call.”

I flinched. Of course! The signal we came here to locate! We never found it’s origin, as we were too preoccupied with our...find. “If we could find the device that was transmitting the blasted call that we were tracking, maybe we could find a way to boost it so it would escape the system and get to Bespin.”

“Ingenious, but risky, Devon. We would run the risk of the signal reaching Ison as well,” Beryl warned. “I would rather not be kidnapped by pirates and forced into the slave trade, but...if it is our only hope, then it is worth the hazard.”

Another skitter from the other side of us, near the main entrance. Just as we all snapped and looked, one of our light posts exploded from the lowering cold, a rain of sparks showering the ice below, giving us all a jump. Then another blew, and then another, the lowest operating temperature for the lances having passed.

I then swore I heard whispering, but kept it to myself, worried I would come off as crazy.

“We’ll need these then.” Beryl reached into the folds of her parka and retrieved two miniature glowlamps, each fitted with head straps. “I had them specially manufactured before we left Bespin – they are particularly resistant against condensation and the cold, so, praying their build was of the quality promised, they should hold out the night.”

“You? Pray?” Sheena smirked, unable to conceptualize Beryl having any kind of religious inclination beyond science.

“Enough!” I had heard enough flak for the night. “Let’s just do this and get the hell out of here while we still can.”

After Beryl and I strapped on the glowlamps, we slowly set out back the way they came. More and more of the light posts failed, each one making us that much more edgy until none were left, save the minimally-comforting narrow beams from our foreheads. Sheena stayed as close to me as she could, nearly tripping me up more than once, while Beryl took the lead, wielding her strip of steel as if she were a Hapan Security agent heading into the darkness.

I thought it curious: Beryl seemed fascinated by the blue-eyed woman, almost intimately aware of who and what she was, but still she decided to carry a weapon after all of her talk about asking her for help. Whatever her agenda was, I found myself stupefied with her bipolar attitude on the matter.

Twenty metros. I had reactivated my positional radar, seeing how close we were to both the supply sled and the signal. They were close, within just a few metros of each other, but, considering the structure of Echo Base, I realized that they were on separate levels. The signal had to be one below, even further down than the depth I had originally said was impossible and had been disproved.

I scoffed at the idea and was tempted to turn the locator off – the last thing I needed in my old age was another damned leap into the unknown.

Ten metros. I knew the sled was close. The corridors seemed different, alien even, with the once-bright and warming posts lighting the way silenced, though I knew the place to be the same. The sharp swaying of our headgear didn’t help, almost making me nauseated by the constant sloshing about.

“There!” Beryl whispered.

I squinted my eyes to the dark break in the ice, seeing the room ahead. Sure enough, that was it. The sled, the drill, the plasteel tunnel and the room, Janus.... I stopped my mental inventory. Janus wasn’t there, his body gone. The woman was mysteriously absent as well, sending chills down my gut. I dared glance behind, half-expecting her to be there, tearing my organs out with her claws, but to my relief the corridor was bare. I shrugged it off and leaned back on my memory – she didn’t have claws...did she? Unwilling to risk it, I reached down and picked up the drill, giving it one good rotation to ensure it was still functional.

“Since you now have the most viable weapon, perhaps you should lead on,” Beryl suggested, grabbing the strap to the supply sled, a pile of Gurner's unused charges still on the end. “I’ll take up the rear with this.”

“To the surface...or to the signal?” I dared ask, uncertain now if I wanted to go on.

“I say we head up and wait for Al.” Sheena’s voice was hopeful, though me and Beryl were both too old for such naive comforts.

“If we can activate the signal, then it would not matter either way. If the carpet comes, then we are saved. If not, then perhaps Bespin will send a ship by morning. Best we be safe; hope for the best, but plan for the worst.”

I looked again at the locator. Three metros...straight down. “It’s right below us.”

“Here?” Beryl looked at the locator, distrusting anyone’s eyes but her own.

Devon looked at the ice drill and checked the battery again. “It might have enough juice to break through, but would be useless as a weapon after, unless you wanted to poke someone to death.”

Devon.

I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“What?” Beryl asked. “What is it?”

They didn’t hear it. “Nothing. Just a spasm, I suppose.”

“Must be the cold setting in.” Beryl dug into the supply sled and pulled out a couple of those silvery weather blankets, taking one for herself and giving the other to Sheena. “Drill fast, Devon. All our lives depend upon it.”

Nearly taking the drill to the virago, I instead focused my building loathing into digging.

The sweat from my brow froze upon my cheeks, painfully making my wrinkled skin pinch together. I tried my best to ignore it – at least I was staying warm. The two girls up top watched intently, them being perfectly toasty with the weather blankets...at least for now. Both were warming up to a couple of cups of stimcaf, to my ire.

I had dug a narrow trench-like gap with the drill, going down in steps as to avoid falling through to whatever lay below us. The signal was close now, spitting distance were it in the open, so it definitely was right below us. My mind raced through the possibilities, still concerned that these lower levels where here all along while I was stationed here. What was the rebellion doing down here? And that woman...what the hell was she? And, more importantly, where did she go...and was she going to come back for the rest of us? And what did she do with Janus’ body? Finding myself growing paranoid, I tried to shut it all out and focus on digging.

Success. The drill poked through into an open cavern, pitch dark with no light to speak of. A gust of air pushed through the fifteen-centimeter gap, about the size of a remote droid, washing over my face. It caught be by surprise, as it was a tad bit warmer than the air we were acclimated to on the upper level. My first thought was machinery exhaust, maybe something to do with the woman’s pod when it activated.

“Hey Sheena.” I motioned to the youngling. “Dig into the sled and find me one of the large glowlamps.”

My eyes away from the hole, through my peripheral vision I thought I saw something move in the darkness, but turning back, the light from my headgear shining a thin beam down to the snow mounds below, there was nothing there.

While the pilot was digging through the piles of gear and supplies, one of the smaller of Gurner’s explosive charges fell off the sled and onto the ice, bouncing a couple of times, making both me and Beryl jump, her spilling her stimcaf all over her white gloves.

“Dammit, girl, have you no senses at all?!?” Beryl reached down and delicately picked up the detonator. “You could have vaporized the lot of us!”

“Oh, why don’t you go throw yourself off Cloud City,” Sheena uttered impulsively.

I almost concurred, but decided it best not to strain things anymore than necessary. I pulled myself out of the hole, agitated that I was having to take on the role of minder for two adults. “Can the pillow talk you two.” I grabbed the found glowlamp out of Sheena’s hands and returned to the hole. “I don’t want to hear a word while I’m down there.”

Switching the lantern on, I carefully let it drop down to the ground, illuminating the tunnel with it’s yellowy rays of artificial light. A wisp of dusty snow kicked up when the small box landed, clouding the air in a fine mist. My eyes squinted. Fresh powder? In the underground? The only explanation I could come up with was that it had been falling from the ceiling as I was drilling.

“See anything?” Beryl neared. “The transmission device?”

“I need some cable.” I ignored her. “And some climbing spikes.”

As I used the drill to make the hole wide enough for me to fit through, Sheena found the items I requested, this time being more careful around the charges, and handed them to me. I proceeded to shoot the spikes into the ice, creating anchors for the fibra-rope cable, and let the coil snake it’s way to the ground floor, creating more icy dust. Taking the pre-knotted cable in hand, I eased myself down into the hole, my lower half feeling painfully exposed.

“Careful, Devon,” Beryl whispered to me.

“Lower the drill down to me as soon as I hit the bottom,” I said back. “Just don’t drop it on my head, alright?”

Some five meters down my feet touched bottom, my boots sinking in to the ankle-deep snow. This was no pile of dust from the ceiling – this was really freshly-fallen powder. But from where? I moved my headlamp around the cave, getting more of the feeling I was outside, rather than in an underground complex.

“Unh.”

I heard a moan, coming from somewhere near, just around where the cave began to bend.

“The drill!” I whispered as loudly as I could so Sheena and Beryl could hear me. “The drill! Now!”

Beryl pulled up the cable and tied the handle of the ice drill to the end of it. As carefully as she could manage, she lowered the heavy piece of machinery, which I quickly tore from the cable and checked the battery: almost dead.

With drill in hand and light facing forward, I slowly inched my way through the snow, unsure of what to expect. There were no other footprints to be seen in the snow, just my own, so whatever it was that made that noise must not have come this way.

Then the floor of the cave, as it twisted and turned to the east, began to rise. Glancing down at my directional locator, the signal came to; right at my feet. Kneeling down, resting the drill upon the snow, I dug at a short mound. A short way down I hit something solid, both to my relief and to my consternation. Brushing away the loose powder, my worst fears coming true, I realized the truth of it just as a trickle of blood pattered upon my white gloves.

This was no man-made tunnel.

“Gurner!”

I picked up the drill, backing away a couple of steps so I could see him clearly in the light of my glowlamp. Hanging upside from the ceiling, his feet frozen in the ice above, his blood was flowing freely from a ghastly wound: his entire right arm had been shredded from his body.

“No....” The engineer’s voice was faint, fading with every drop. “Don’t....”

I glanced up at him, his dangling fingers too high for me to even touch, let alone try and cut him down.

“Devon....” Gurner looked at me in horror, his body beginning to convulse from both the horrendous wound and the cold. “Help...m.m.me”

Then I heard it. A fell, soul-chilling cry that only those who have spent extensive time on Hoth would know. I desperately looked for signs of it, ready to defend myself, but couldn’t see it anywhere.

Too late; I was in the maw.

I turned back to the cable, which lay in the distance, the light from above shining down like a beacon of hope in the darkness.

I looked back up at the man as he was slowly dying, me incapable of doing anything to ease his suffering. “I’m sorry, Gurner.” I heard that growl once more, my feet reacting and taking off toward the light.

Gurner Halidon whimpered as I fled, leaving him in the darkness, knowing his doom to be complete.

I slung the drill over my back and jumped for the cable, moving up the knotted bunches as fast as my arms and legs could manage. The cold no longer a factor, the fire in my veins was taking me over, the sweat pouring freely from my pores.

“Devon!” Sheena dropped down onto my chiseled steps and reached out toward me with her hand. “Hurry! It’s coming!”

I almost paused. How did they know?

Taking the young girl’s hand, her pulling with all her strength, I tore myself out of the hole just as a scream echoed down in the tunnel below.

“What the hell was that?” Beryl was near the lab from which the blue-eyed woman had come, her makeshift spear in her hands.

I looked at the scientist, puzzled. “Wait, I thought....” I froze. I had forgotten that the females stayed in the caves with their young, but the males were usually always out on the hunt. Through my ignorance, we were all to be damned.

“Devon!” Sheena exclaimed, reaching for the hold-out blaster tucked in her boot. “Look out!!!”

Before she could get off a shot, the door leading to the outer hall came crushing inward, a massive, hulking flurry of white and claw breaking through in an ample spray of crushed ice, bellowing it’s lust for flesh to provide for his mate. I turned just as the beast came at me, a massive paw swinging downward at my face.

Just as I thought I was done for, Beryl’s spear came flying through the air and sliced cleanly through the wampa’s left forearm, causing the creature to reel and pull back. Instinct and training ruling reason and debate, I jumped to my feet and grabbed Sheena by the arm, pushing our way past the distracted behemoth and into the hall. Too late to turn back, I cursed as the ice drill clattered to the ground, having fallen off my back in the rush.

“Beryl, move!!!” I yelled back to our compatriot as we ran.

Taking one quick glance back, I noticed a curiosity: the Wampa, larger than any I had ever seen, had all the fur on it’s right arm torn off in ragged, bloody patches. Deep scarring suggested that it might have been doing it to itself, and for quite some time.

The thought then hit me: just like Gurner had been missing his right arm.

Making our way through the winding, dark tunnels, the light from my headgear the only one to be seen, we heard the wampa vociferating it’s revenge upon us. Coming out to what was once the main hangar, now but a crumbling mass of ice, steel, and crushed, antiquated equipment. Me and Sheena stopped and turned, staring down the tunnel behind us, eyes peeled for the wampa.

A dark shadow and rustling of feet. Taking the blaster from Sheena, I dropped to a knee and took aim. I knew the hold-out blaster would be superficial at best, barely powerful enough to pierce the thing’s hide, not to mention only having six shots, but it was all we had.

“Devon!” I nearly fainted in surprise as Beryl came rushing down the hall with the life-supporting equipment sled in tow. “It’s right behind me!”

Seeing the frame of the wampa filling the hall behind Beryl, I took a chance and fired the blaster, the red beam of energy striking the ceiling above. Sprinting forward, I gripped Beryl’s hand and ripped her out of harm’s way as the ice caved and came crashing down, the hateful eyes of the wampa glaring at me as an impenetrable wall of solid debris sealed the tunnel, sparing us from a most horrific fate.

Again huddled together for warmth, the sled and what little survival gear remained now ours, we took station near the entrance of the base, the storm having lessened none in our time away. Me taking the first watch, the adrenaline still pumping, I let the other two try and get some sleep.

What day was it? Atunda? Katunda? I had no idea anymore. Everything was just a blur, a myriad of circumstance and consequence that had led up to this point. This was supposed to be an archaeological dig, tomb raiding, to be more precise, though it had twisted into more of a nightmare than I had anticipated.

Janus Arrelian and Gurner Halidon were dead, the albino Wookiee, Albrackish, missing. There was a shorn-armed wampa roaming about, only separated by a thin meter of ice, and that blue-eyed woman...wherever she had gone. Probably taken by the snow beasts, if we were lucky. She had saved us, spared us from a fate of Janus’ probable making, though even now I found myself questioning. Did it even happen? The waking dream? The woman? This place? It all seemed so surreal now, almost to the point that I began to question my own sanity.

Devon.

That voice again, echoing not inside the frosty caverns and pockmarked byways, but only inside of my head. It was true: I had gone mad.

“No.”

I blinked. There she was, her effervescent blue eyes upon me. Why hadn’t I seen her before? One moment I was alone, standing at my post, the next there was a naked crazy woman in front of me. I would have laughed to myself had I not been in a state of frozen panic – it reminded me of my time on Zeltros when I was younger.

“Tireless,” she said, her dark curls swaying as she neared me. “Pain...regret.”

I tried to talk, but couldn’t come up with anything of value to say. Was I still awake? I didn’t know. I looked to the others, seeing them slumbering peacefully, unaware of the being in their midst.

“Fear...no....” The woman still seemed confused, unsure of what she wanted to express. “Depth. Four...remain. Two...yes...only two.”

The last time I spoke with her was burned into my memory. She had said only two would escape, though me, in my folly, wouldn’t believe her still. Her stare pierced into me once again, seeming to dig at the optic nerves behind my eyes, making them fray and break. My vision was no longer my own. I belonged to her.

“We must rest.”

I gawked. That was the first whole sentence I had heard her utter, and it came at such a surprise I wasn’t sure how to react. “Sleep? We need sleep?”

“Sleep?” She smiled, a hidden laughter somewhere behind those pale lips. “No...rest. Forever.”

I impulsively gripped Sheena’s blaster. I wasn’t sure of the intent of the message, but to me it seemed as if she was saying that we needed to die.

The woman’s head slightly tilted in curiosity, her gaze never leaving my face.

I swallowed the building dryness in my throat. “What are you?”

She smiled again, ever so slightly. “You...understand. But not. Your eyes...colors to see...but..no..not for you. We must rest.”

We? There were others? Then it hit me like a load of carbonite: I might be alone in my own body, one voice and one mind, but she most definitely was not.

“How many are you?” I worded it as best I could, though I couldn’t think of any way that would have been proper Basic.

“One vessel.” She reached out to me, me feeling the cold of her hand before it even neared my face. “Many voices...legion.”

Her fingers ran alongside my cheek, my mind flashing with images as they slowly waved passed my eyes. I saw her, again in that small room on that unknown planet, surrounded by scientists. Again I saw that wave of power flow through her body, tearing the planet to shreds, detritus and starships fluttering in the gale like leaves upon a tumultuous tide.

And then I saw something else, something so terrible that I nearly shuddered in terror. I saw that red brand of the old empire, that cursed imperial crest that was stolen and defaced from the republic that came before; Palpatine’s com code. Hanging high from the rafters of some large assembly hall, it took me back to the old days, before the rebellion had won it’s short-lived victory. And down below the draping symbols of control and power lay the woman, again contained in some kind of pod, the needles and tubes flowing into her body replaced.

She had been captured.

Surrounding her was a circle of old men in green and gray uniforms. Imperial Remnant. Moffs, by the look of them. I grit my teeth upon seeing those high collars, navy caps, and polished black boots. I had long thought them removed from the galaxy, but I knew that no matter how well you might have dressed it, every healed wound still carries a scar underneath.

“Begin the countdown,” one of the Moffs said to a nearby captain. “And let the entire galaxy come to understand that the Empire still draws breath!”

My view pulled out until I was floating above the celestial bodies of the galaxy, looking down at them as they twinkled in the void. But then, like a fell wind passing over a battlefield, a thin blue line arched outward from what looked to be the fiery planet of Yag’Dhul. Spreading across the expansion region like a withering plague, the nearby planets of Vandelhelm, Nkllon, and Kinyen all seemed to corrode and dissolve, becoming nothing more than wisps of dust in the dark black of space.

Suddenly I was back in my own body, sitting on the ground, blaster in my hand, with the woman’s pleading eyes looking upon me. I glanced down at the weapon in my grip, me having unwittingly switched off the safety and placed my finger upon the trigger.

“Put us to rest.” She smiled. “The future...indiscriminate. Free...the minds...of many to save the...many.”

I now understood. Whatever dark technology had created this being was a blight upon the galaxy, an abomination against all things. She was not inherently evil, far from it as I saw her, but could be used as a tool to destroy and enslave others. She was right, in that she was a threat to all life and needed to be...put to rest.

I held the blaster up and aimed it at her heart. Looking deeply into those electric eyes, feeling the eons of mortality coursing through her reanimated veins, I took a deep breath and gently pulled back on the squeaky trigger.

“No!” Beryl flew into the scene as the blaster bolt shot outward, her intervening hands causing it to miss and strike a near wall. “You can’t, Devon! She’s too valuable!”

I shoved the doctor off of me and rose to my feet, the blaster now out of my hands and laying about a meter away. “We have to! She’s made me see things...things beyond simply good and bad. If she is allowed to live, the entire galaxy will suffer!”

“And from the ashes a new, righteous order will rise!”

My blood chilled at Beryl’s words. “What’re you saying?!?”

Both of us glanced at the blaster, lying equally away from both of us.

“She is the future, Devon. The future of this galaxy in ruin. Without her, we are all doomed to an eternity of war, as if the past century has not been enough. You have seen it, the passing of one tyrant for another. Only through the wisdom of the Moffs are we to survive! And she is the key!”

“The Empire? Your talking about bringing back the Empire?!? After all that has happened?!?”

“See the truth of it, Devon.” Beryl looked at the woman, who was sitting there, quietly listening and watching events unfold. “With her, there will be no more war, no more killing. She will force everyone to cooperate and work together. Think of all the trillions of lives that will be saved!”

I thought of those planets, thousands of years of life suddenly erased from existence. “By murdering others to set an example? By unleashing a terror so great as to be able to kill from anywhere? Power begets abuse of power, Beryl!”

The doctor paused for a moment, feigning consideration. “In order to set things right, sacrifices must be made. It’s for the greater good, Devon.”

“What’s going on?” Sheena’s groggy voice came in from the side, her having mysteriously slept through the blaster shot. “What’re you two Trantor pigeons squawking on about?”

Seeing the opportunity, I dove for the blaster, but Beryl proved quicker on her feet than I gave her credit for. Snatching up the firearm and pointing it at my face, the Coruscanti had got the upper hand.

“I am sorry, Devon.” Beryl steeled her nerves, her face contracting. “But it appears you have expended your usefulness in this matter.”

I stared down the black barrel of the blaster, frozen at the sight of my own mortality. After all this time, after everything, I was to die back where I started: back in the icy confines of Echo Base. I knew I should have died back then, all those fifty-four years ago. Though after half a century of running from it, it seemed as if fate had finally caught up with me.

And I found myself ready.

“You could have gained so much.” I nearly died of anxiety, Beryl’s monologue continuing. “Think of all the power to be had, Devon. The Empire has always rewarded the faithful grandly, and those who have served their purpose. Starships, wealth, protection; the life of a king to be had. All you have to do is what you are asked.”

I gnawed on the side of my tongue. Either Beryl didn’t have the guts, or she was wagering that I still was needed. I prayed it was the latter, but found myself growing increasingly indifferent, so I stayed silent.

“Beryl?!?” Sheena stayed to the side, her eyes wide in astonishment. “What the spast do you think you’re doing?!?”

“Saving the galaxy, child.” Beryl circled to her right to keep both me and Sheena in her sight, though the blaster remained on me. “And you both are going to help me do it.”

“Cold,” the blue-eyed woman remarked. “Heat...burning heat...now...no...cold.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Cold.”

“Command her to go to the ship, Devon.” Beryl’s tone was astringent, like a mother to a child. “She can survive the storm, though she will not listen to me. You...must do it.”

I looked at the woman, her eyes locked on me. “Why me?”

“You woke her up; you were the first face she was to see. Don’t you understand, Devon? She was designed to do this, that way when she was ready she would follow the commands given to her. I tried to stop you, as I was to be the first one into the lab, but you, bullheaded fool, would not listen.” Beryl lifted the blaster again, trying to reiterate the leash she had on us. “To the ship, Devon. She can pilot it back and pick us up. And then...we go to deliver the Moffs their prize.”

I nodded my head, licking the front of my teeth. “Huh...I didn’t know they made Imperial uniforms in women’s.”

“Don’t even attempt, Devon.” Beryl seemed amused by my averment. “You have no choice in the matter. Help me and benefit, or leave this place with nothing; not even your life.”

“You can take your sithspit and use it to artificially inseminate a rancor, for all I care! If I’m dead, then you lose your trophy. If you’re dead, then the Moffs still don’t get their trophy. I hate to break it to ya, kid, but you have about as much leverage as a Hutt in quicksand.”

“Hmm.” Beryl’s eyebrows raised. “You know what, Devon? You would be correct in your assumptions.”

Before I could stop her, Beryl turned the blaster on Sheena and fired, the bolt passing clean through her left shoulder, just above her heart, and dissipating against the ice behind. Sheena reeled and hit the ground, clasping the wound and contorting in pain.

I was on my feet, ready to pounce, but Beryl’s blaster had returned to it’s original target. “Why, Beryl?”

“She will survive...if she receives prompt medical attention. There’s Bio-Bacta tanks on the Winter Dawn, and quick passage to Bespin’s facilities, should you see to the ship’s prompt arrival.”

Enmity seethed from my eyes, the muffled cries coming through Sheena’s grit teeth eroding my nerve. “What is the name your body was known as?” I said to our host. “Before you were...changed?”

“This one....” Her eyes squinted, her lips pursed. “This vessel...Aledora...we think.”

“Aledora....” Almost couldn’t bring myself to say it, but knew the girl would die within a few hours if she didn’t receive care. “Go get the ship.”

She stood to her feet, her face level with mine. With a simple nod she began to walk away.

“You are doing the right thing, Devon,” Beryl said, spreading her justifications over me like a swarm of barbflies making a nest. “Trust in that your actions here will not go unnoticed or unrewarded.”

Like hell they wouldn’t.

“Devon!” Sheena yelled from the ground as one of Gurner’s explosive charges flew past my face, the red light flashing upon it indicating that it was armed. “Run!”

Diving away as the cylindrical device clanked against the ice and landed near Beryl’s feet, the subsequent detonation threw me a good five meters, shredding and scalding the outer layer of my parka. The entire cavern shook as the roof above became unstable, a large portion of the failing support beams having finally taken all the strain they could handle.

Pushing myself over, chunks of ice rolling off my body, I glanced Beryl’s way and saw she had also been knocked back, though she seemed relatively unharmed, just dazed. Taking the opportunity, I pushed all the energy I had left into my muscles and scrambled to my feet.

“Come on!” I rushed over and grabbed Sheena by her right arm, wrapping it around my shoulder. “The bay is coming down!”

Sheena grimaced at the pain as we fled, large chunks of the ceiling above crumbling and falling at our feet. The sound of twisting metal and something akin to a large waterfall filled our ears as Echo Base began to implode upon itself, the dark secrets within falling victim to thousands of decameters of solid ice rushing to fill the vacant space.

“Devon!!!” Beryl screamed at me, firing the last four shots of the blaster superfluously as we evaded her range. “Damn you!!!”

Stopping for a short moment, just as we reached the wall of turmoil that was consuming the outside of the base, I glanced backward and spied Aledora, standing tall as massive boulders and sheets of entrapped water came rushing down around her. She smiled lightly and raised her right hand, a grateful farewell given as we wrapped what little protection we had around us and fled into the storm.

We only made it a few meters when the last of the base exhaled it’s last, the intensity from the crushing weight forcing all the air out of the landing bay and knocking us to our knees in the mounds of blinding white. We both stood there, quiet, knowing our fate, and that of Beryl and Aledora, to be sealed. We had made it out alive, had escaped the clutches of a future dark, only now to be lost upon the surface of an inhospitable rock.

The blue-eyed creature was right: only two escaped the maw. I laughed at the irony-laden hilarity of it all. Her prophetic speech had come to pass, only to let us die in obscurity. Though I couldn’t ignore the fact of the matter, I decided there was one last wisp of fight left in me.

“How far to the ship?” I yelled over the storm to my compatriot.

“Fifteen metros!” Sheena was shivering with her arms wrapped around herself, her weather blanket having been left behind in the speedy flight. “It’s too far!”

“No!” I yelled defiantly to the powers that be. “Not like this!”

“We won’t make it past five! You know we can’t!”

I tore off my shredded parka, the cold and ice tearing at my now-exposed frame. “Maybe we can’t...but you can!”

Not giving her the chance to protest, I wrapped my parka around Sheena and shoved her to the ground, covering her with my body. Gifting her with the chance of life, hoping the storm would soon pass, I leaned in and whispered into her ear one last message as the tempest beat down upon us.


--------------------

Beryl rushed through the dark tunnels, climbing over the fallen spires and mangled struts, her headlamp luckily still functional, albeit cracked. A trickle of blood ran down her forehead, she having received a sharp blow from some falling steel. There were still a few pockets and byways that hadn’t fallen victim to the collapse of the landing bay, a lifeline to the desperate doctor, though Beryl knew her oxygen to be limited; she had to find another way out.

After two hours of spelunking and carefully digging through partially-blocked passages, Beryl breathed a sigh of relief when she came back to the room where they had found the last remains of Project Pantheon: the hidden plasteel confines of the entity that was supposed to be her Empire’s salvation.

She spat upon the pod that once held her father’s crowning achievement.

Turning to the hole that Devon had drilled, the fibra-rope cable was still intact and dangling down to the cavern below. The cavern that led to the signal that brought them here. She had no idea what the signal was, for it was mere coincidence that events had happened the way they did. She had been looking for passage back to Hoth for decades, wanting to finish her father’s work and bring it back for the glory of the Empire, and through the fool Janus Arrelian she had found her chance.

She grit her teeth in self-loathing.

Swinging her legs over the edge of the hole, Beryl climbed her way down to the soft piles of snow below, smelling that fresh air. Certainly this snow had blew in from some other entrance to the outside, which gave her hope. Thinking optimistically, her plan was to find the device, figure out how to make it broadcast further, and await pickup. She had arranged a meeting with the Moffs and informed them of her plan, so they were surely to send a rescue team if she did not meet them at the rendezvous.

She looked at the chronometer on her wrist – the set rendezvous was three hours ago, so certainly there was already a ship on the way to the system to investigate. Sure, she had lost the main reason why they would come here, but they wouldn’t abandon one of their own.

Beryl moved slowly through the snow, content to take her time, and pulled out her directional locator. Finding the bandwidth that the mysterious signal was broadcasting on, she homed in on it and followed Devon’s footprints until she came to a terrible sight.

What remained of Gurner Halidon was hanging from the high ceiling, his bones stripped clean and a mound of crimson snow lay below. Beryl cringed at the sight of the missing right arm, the socket shredded. Shining her light around, she soon caught a glimpse of Janus, hanging upside down as well a few meters away. His body was still intact, though, curiously, his right arm had also been severed.

Beryl at first felt a gripping fear in her heart, but it ebbed as she thought of the Wampa; it had to still be trapped in the upper level somewhere, as there was no way it could have gotten out to come back to it’s den. More than likely it was killed when the base collapsed.

Throwing her inhibitions aside, Beryl kneeled down in the strings of indistinguishable viscera and dug down, soon finding a silver ring, about the size of a bracelet. Only did her elation turn to horror when she pulled it out of the snow and found a skeletal hand still attached to it.

Beryl gasped and dropped the remains out of shock, but soon returned to it – she was an archaeologist; she had seen such things before. Eying the device meticulously, wiping away the blood and snow, she realized what it was: a life monitor. And judging by the size of a skeleton, it must have been a child who wore it before the onset of a gruesome fate.

Beryl was confused. A life monitor was a short range device, it’s signal only capable of spanning a few dozen metros. How was it that it had escaped the system and reached Ison? Then the thought hit her: it had to have been amplified by something...or someone.

“Damn you...you...you abomination!” she yelled into the cavern. “May Chaos take all your cursed Jedi souls!”

She knew this would happen, had foreseen it, and Beryl had done nothing to anticipate her mingling. So ensnared within her failure to see that her rescue of the Empire had actually been a carefully orchestrated trap set by Aledora, she noticed only too late the sounds of crushing snow coming near; the heavy tromping of the female Wampa coming to protect her den.

Sheena’s tear-streaked face broke forth from her enclosure, she having to push with all her strength to move Devon’s body. He had given his life to save hers, supplying her body with warmth, buying her time as the storm slowly capitulated. The sun was rising, heat, be it sparse, coming to her skin. Breaking forth from above the high mountain that was Echo Base, it shone like a goddess, bathing everything in a brilliant white. The pilot stared into the blazing inferno, her mind empty and thoughtless. All that was left was her, the planet, and it’s primary, burning in the distance. Everyone else was gone, and what little semblance of reality that had dug into her mind had released it’s talons, letting her alone for a time.

Feeling the need to move come over her, Sheena stood to her feet and stretched. She looked down at Devon’s lifeless form, a man she hardly knew and yet felt as if she had spent a lifetime with. Then she remembered what he had said to her.

Crouching down, she removed his tattered parka and laid it over his body, covering his face. With a couple of large chunks of ice she secured it to the ground, ensuring it wouldn’t blow away. Then, with her one good arm, she pulled up his left hand and pried open his clenched fingers.

Within his grasp, him clinging to it like dew to the morning grasses of Dantooine, was a small trinket; a memory retained from all those years ago. Next to his body, Sheena dug a small hole in the snow and gently laid it down. She then took her hand and brushed the removed ice crystals back over, burying the piece alongside it’s owner.

Hoth had finally reclaimed that which it had lost; another monument that would remain for all time.

But then a shadow descended, blocking out the sun like a giant bird in the sky. Her tears of sorrow and regret turning to tears of joy, she nearly fainted at the sight: the Winter Dawn, gleaming in the sunlight, slowly swooping downward and landing a dozen meters away.

Sheena stood to her feet and brushed off the snow and frost. The wound in her shoulder tugging at all her muscles, she translated the pain into energy and ran for the slowly lowering ramp of the infiltrator, a warm gust of exhaust brushing over her face; her favorite smell more prominent to her than ever.

As soon as the ramp touched down on the ice, a familiar face came trouncing down, a bowcaster in his hands. Albrackish, his white hair flailing in the light wind, had indeed made it back to the ship alive and had returned for the others as soon as the storm had passed.

Sheena! the Wookiee yelled, the girl’s translator fortuitously still intact.

Sheena motioned for Albrackish to help her, him carefully lending his long arms for support.

You’re wounded! He looked toward the base, seeing it in ruin. What happened in there? Where’s the others?

Sheena took one last glance back as they moved up the ramp. “They’re...at peace.” She sighed, another tear trickling down her cheek. “All of them.”

Unsure of her meaning, Albrackish pressed a nearby button to raise up the ramp and told the autopilot droid to take off while he tended to Sheena’s injury. Slowly lifting from the drifts of snow, the Winter Dawn accelerated and made a pass over Echo Base before lifting her nose upward and shooting for the heavens in the growing starlight.


- The End -

Roll credits, cue music: Within Temptation -- Restless



~ Original Story ~
Jake and Tiffany McBride

~ Characters ~
Tiffany

~ Graphic Art ~
Jake

~ R&D ~
Jake



~ Special Thanks ~

George Lucas
Mountain Dew
Wookieepedia
Wikipedia
Within Temptation
Zelda Universe
YouTube
Winter Dawn

The Ghosts of Hoth is a work of fiction -- any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. This work, although copyright of the author(s), is non-canonical fan fiction -- all Star Wars related material, including, but not limited to, locations, technology, terminology, language, characters, etc etc, is the sole property and copyright of Lucasfilm Ltd. Music courtesy of Within Temptation and YouTube.

©2009

Chapter 6, midway through:
I then swore I heard whispering, but kept it to myself, worried I would come off as crazy.

“We’ll need these then.” Beryl reached into the folds of her parka and retrieved two miniature glowlamps, each fitted with head straps. “I had them specially manufactured before we left Bespin – they are particularly resistant against condensation and the cold, so, praying their build was of the quality promised, they should hold out the night.”

“You? Pray?” Sheena smirked, unable to conceptualize Beryl having any kind of religious inclination beyond science.

“Enough!” Devon had heard enough flak for the night. “Let’s just do this and get the hell out of here while we still can.”

After Beryl and Devon strapped on the glowlamps, they slowly set out back the way they came. More and more of the light posts failed, each one making the trio that much more edgy until none were left, save the minimally-comforting narrow beams from Beryl and Devon’s foreheads. Sheena stayed as close to Devon as she could, nearly tripping him up more than once, while Beryl took the lead, wielding her strip of steel as if she were a Hapan Security agent heading into the darkness.

I thought it curious: Beryl seemed fascinated by the blue-eyed woman, almost intimately aware of who and what she was, but still she decided to carry a weapon after all of her talk about asking her for help. Whatever her agenda was, I found myself stupefied with her bipolar attitude on the matter.

Hrmmm... First Person to Third Person and back to First... it's not like you, Doran.


EDIT: After posting the above, I finished the story, and I must say, what a wonderful story it was. I would do a rubric or something, but it's 3:00 in the morning and i must sleep. Good work as always, Doran.

Thanks -- I was beginning to wonder if anyone was going to comment! And yea, I must admit that the story originally started in third person, but then it changed when it became a co-op work, as per the request of my compatriot. That stuff drives me nuts, so I'm off to fix it right now!