by Claudia Gray
“Why? Is this about Berisse’s birthday?” Ciena folded her arms and glared at him. “You ruined the surprise, didn’t you?”
“You don’t give me nearly enough credit—either for my expertise with surprise parties, which is considerable, or for knowing what’s important enough to merit pulling you back onto the bridge when you’re off duty.”
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled with a sense of both danger and excitement. “What?”
“One of the probe droids picked up a very interesting signal on the ice world of Hoth,” Nash said with relish. “We may have finally located the rebel base.”
Ciena sucked in a sharp breath. “And we’re going in?”
Nash’s grin widened. “With five Imperial-class Star Destroyers by our side.”
The image of Jude’s smile flashed through Ciena’s mind. At last they had a chance to avenge themselves on the people who had destroyed the Death Star and murdered her best friend—and to stamp out the Rebellion once and for all.
Thane groaned as they opened the bay doors again and a blast of frigid air swept past them. “I’m going to freeze my choobies off.”
The guy showing him around—Dak Ralter—laughed as he unsaddled another of the tauntauns. “There are easier ways to switch genders, you know.”
“I didn’t mean I wanted to freeze ’em off. I just meant—it’s so cold.” After a childhood spent in the high mountains of Jelucan, Thane had thought he knew how to handle being cold—but Hoth was on another scale together.
“Don’t talk about it. Don’t even think about it,” Dak said earnestly. “Just keep your pants on and focus on the big picture.”
“I know, I know. We made our base on this frozen hunk of rock because the Empire would never think to look here. Because who in their right mind would subject themselves to this?” Thane’s gesture took in the ice walls of their base, the bitter chill that pierced to the bone, and the pungent odor of the tauntauns they were currently freeing. “Nobody could ever say we joined the Rebellion for the fun of it.”
“Nobody would say that!” Dak Ralter’s face fell as if somebody really had accused them of fighting a war just for kicks. “Or they’d better not. Anybody who doesn’t think we need to stand up to the Empire—”
“Take it easy. I was just joking.”
Dak shot Thane a reproving look, as if to say this war was far too serious for anything as lowbrow as humor. Some of the new recruits were like that at first—so idealistic that spending time with them felt like biting into pure sugar.
Or so the long-timers said. Thane outranked Dak by a grand total of three weeks. But he felt like he was two decades older than Dak, rather than two years. Thane had never been one of the idealists; he’d accepted Wedge Antilles’s invitation not because he believed the Rebellion was pure good but because he’d learned the Empire was pure evil. Even for him, though, the adjustment felt strange. Small as the Moa was, every crew member lived in a private cabin of his or her very own; even in Imperial service, he’d never had to bunk with more than seven other guys. In the Rebellion, Thane slept in an enormous bunker with a couple hundred other people, the majority of whom seemed to snore. Rations were scanty, the odds terrible, and the risks even greater than Thane would have imagined—and so far he’d been in none of the epic battles he’d been anticipating. Instead, he had made a few supply runs while avoiding Imperial border controls. He’d helped set up the Hoth base. And now here he was taking it down again: setting their pack creatures loose so they’d be long gone by the time the Empire arrived, because apparently a probe droid had found them already
They’d just gotten set up on Hoth, too. He half wanted to ask Rebel Command how they were supposed to win a war when the Empire could find the rebel bases within a month.
He looked over the back of the grunting tauntaun nearest him to take in the entire base around him. Mechanics worked feverishly on fighters, their bluish-white welding torches lighting the murky repair bay. Princess Leia spoke intently to General Rieekan, her intensity obvious even at that distance, Thane thought. (They’d passed each other in corridors twice without her recognizing him from that long-ago dance.) Droids whirred through the fray as noncombat personnel ran for the first transports; boarding had begun already. Thane knew only that his group—Corona Squadron—wasn’t up yet. For now, he just had to keep freeing smelly tauntauns.
Dak’s chatter broke his reverie. “I still can’t believe I got assigned as gunner to Luke Skywalker. The guy who singlehandedly destroyed the Death Star!”
“Somebody’s going to be his gunner. Might as well be you.” Thane was mostly glad it wasn’t him. Yes, Skywalker had shown incredible courage and made a near-impossible shot—he deserved respect—but that particular act of heroism was one Thane preferred to admire from a distance.
“And they say he hopes to become a Jedi Knight, just like in the olden days,” Dak continued, talking as dreamily as a schoolkid with a crush. “Do you know he has a real, true lightsaber? He even learned how to use the Force from the great General Kenobi, the last of the Jedi!”
It was all Thane could do not to groan. Please, not more superstitious nonsense about the “Force.” In his opinion, the rebel troops needed to be motivated by the harsh truth about the Empire, not crazy religious beliefs.
Then he remembered Ciena’s voice so vividly that it was as if she’d whispered in his ear. Believing in something greater than ourselves isn’t crazy. It’s proof we’re sane. Look how vast the galaxy is. Don’t you have to admit we can’t be the greatest power within it?
She had said that to him during one of their final days on Jelucan, before they left for the academy. He’d laughed at her for suggesting that maybe the Force had made sure they went to the same school on Coruscant, to keep them together. By now, even Ciena would have to admit they weren’t lucky enough to share a destiny.
So why was the memory of her still more real to him than the person actually standing a meter away?
“Let’s just get this done, all right? We don’t want to run off and leave these things to starve penned up in here.” Thane patted one tauntaun on the nose before slipping off its halter. The beast bounded away, eager to find a pack and burrow down for warmth. “We have to haul out of here within the day, Rieekan says. I don’t want to get stranded on Hoth because we didn’t finish tauntaun duty in time.”
“Sorry,” Dak said so earnestly that Thane felt a twinge of guilt.
So he gentled his tone. “By the way—you must have impressed somebody to get assigned to fly with Skywalker. They wouldn’t pair him up with just anyone.”
“…really?”
“Definitely.”
He glanced over at Dak and saw that the kid was smiling. With that, they cleared the stall of the final two tauntauns. As the beasts ran into the snow, leaving only their stink behind—
—every siren on the base went off at once.
The shrieking echoed within the cave walls; Thane jerked upright and dropped the harnesses within the first second. Dak yelled, “What does this mean?”
As green as he was, Dak knew the answer. He just didn’t want to believe it. Thane shouted over the din: “The Empire got here faster than we thought. They’ve found us!”
After a quick briefing from Princess Leia, it only took Thane four minutes to suit up and run to his snowspeeder. Four minutes was almost too long.
“Haul your Jelucani ass up here!” shouted Yendor, Thane’s Twi’lek copilot and a fellow member of Corona Squadron. He’d already donned his specially fitted helmet, which allowed his blue lekku to trail down his back. “We’ve got multiple Imperial walkers marching in.”
“I trained on walkers at the academy.” Thane swung into his seat. Even as he put on his helmet, the overhead canopy descended and locked. “I know them inside and out.”
“What can you tell me about these things?” Yendor flipped the switches that would prepare them for takeoff.
“They’re the most heavily arm
ored ground vehicles in the Imperial Army.”
“…so what you’re saying is that you have a thorough knowledge of just how screwed we are.”
“Pretty much,” Thane said. “Look at it this way. If even the Death Star could fall, there’s nothing the Empire has that we can’t take down.”
Yendor released the clamps. “Let’s test that theory.”
Thane put his hands to the controls and felt the engines surge to life beneath him. “Here we go.”
The snowspeeder shot out of the base and into the fray. Laser bolts striped the silver-white sky, and rebel ships scattered wide to face the intruding army…because that was what they had here. Not a strike team. They were up against the full ground forces of the Empire, at least. How many snowtroopers are down there? Thane wondered. And they’ll probably send flametroopers into the base to burn everything still inside—and everyone. Worst of all, he could already see five AT-AT walkers on the horizon. Each one would carry dozens of soldiers and countless armaments, not to mention the deadly cannons mounted in front.
It wouldn’t matter how far the walkers made it if the rebels could just get the transports away, Thane reminded himself. Actually destroying one of those monsters would be a bonus.
Yendor said, “Did your classes at the academy tell you how to deal with the walkers’ heavy armor? Because our blasters aren’t worth a damn against these things.”
Thane took the speeder in fast and low, sending flurries of snow out in a plume beneath them. “Not every place can be fully armored. Think about it. The legs are vulnerable exactly where any creature’s legs would be.”
“Gotcha,” Yendor replied. “Targeting the joints.”
The entire snowspeeder vibrated with the power of the fire they shot at one of the walkers, specifically its “ankles.” While their blasters didn’t have the strength to destroy those alloys, it might be possible to weaken the bolts and fry some of the circuitry.
We can make them unstable. Slow them down. Anything to help the transports get to safety.
Each of those transports would contain nearly a hundred rebel soldiers, the heart of their fleet. If the Empire triumphed today—it truly could be the end of the Rebellion.
But Yendor’s aim was sure and steady. He kept hitting the AT-AT’s lowest joints in the exact same spots, maximizing the damage. As Thane zoomed in with his sensors, he realized they even had a chance to take one of the feet off the thing, which would stop it dead.
“Keep it up!” Thane shouted to Yendor. “I’m taking us all the way in!”
“I can actually target quite well from a distance, you know,” Yendor joked, even as he started firing faster.
By then the lowest section of the walker loomed large in the viewscreen. Thane looked upward to see the thing for real. At first he wished he hadn’t—the monsters looked big enough when you were in them, but from below they seemed to outweigh the entire sky.
But then he told himself, They’re not as big as the mountains back home. You flew through those. You can make it through these.
So he accelerated until the snowy landscape was no more than a blur, bringing them back in as fast as possible. Yendor kept firing with pinpoint accuracy, every hit now winning a puff of black smoke or a shower of sparks.
They were within two hundred meters—one hundred meters—
Thane made the decision in an instant. At the last second he could’ve swerved, he didn’t.
Yendor yelped—still firing—as Thane steered their snowspeeder directly at the AT-AT’s feet. In the final moments before impact, he jerked the speeder sideways until it was perpendicular to the ground, sliding between the AT-AT’s legs until he spun out behind it, still in one piece.
That was more than he could say for the walker, now hobbling on burning, damaged feet. One of the legs lifted minus its foot, then froze; that AT-AT wasn’t going anywhere
“So, that was not a suicide run?” Yendor said.
Thane laughed as he took the snowspeeder around for another pass. “I used to turn sideslips like that through mountain stalactites every day back home. You were safe as a baby the whole time.”
“Remind me never to hire you as a babysitter.”
As Thane zoomed back toward the conflict, he realized that somebody else had managed to bring a walker down—as in, all the way down, flat in the snow. The head blew as he watched, a cough of black smoke against the white ground. For a moment he imagined himself inside the walker. It would’ve been so unbearably hot just before the explosion; the heat must’ve cooked those guys in their armor.…
That’s right, he told himself savagely. We’re here to kill them, just like they’re here to kill us. Better them than you.
Yendor said, “Got word from Commander Skywalker. They looped the walker’s legs with a tow cable.”
“That’s faster,” Thane said. “And saves our energy for later.”
“And doesn’t make us do that damned death-somersault thing—”
“Don’t knock the move that just saved our butts,” Thane said as he headed straight for the next walker. “Just get the tow cable ready.”
As they sped back into the thick of the battle, Thane saw a transport rocket through the atmosphere, preparing for its leap into hyperspace. Were they actually going to escape this mess after all?
Some of them would. But there were crashed snowspeeders lying on the ground, cinders blowing in the wind around them. No matter how many transports got away, the Rebellion had to leave behind a tremendous amount of ships and material. And all the work that had gone into building the base had been wasted. Now they’d have to wander through the galaxy again, looking for someplace even more obscure and unlivable than Hoth…if such a planet even existed. Maybe the Rebellion brass had a long-range plan that would render the day’s battle meaningless, but for now, the Empire was making them pay dearly for their defiance.
Thane gritted his teeth. The larger strategy of the Rebellion wasn’t up to him. He had one job only: to cover the transports.
For the next long while, he allowed himself to think of nothing but the targets, to do nothing but fly in as close as possible so Yendor could make every shot. The ground troops beneath their speeder were sometimes no more than shadows, their white snowtrooper armor rendering them almost invisible against the wintry landscape. Once the last walker went down, the other rebels cheered. Thane stared up at the bleak sky above them. What are they going to send down next?
Nothing came. No more Imperial ships descended. That meant they were waiting above the atmosphere to pick off the rebel fighters one by one.
The moment the final transport streaked into the sky, Thane and Yendor rushed their snowspeeder back to base. By now they had mere minutes to get their individual starfighters off the ground.
All Thane had to do was fly safely out of planetary atmosphere before going to lightspeed—but first he had to outrun the TIE fighters that had just zoomed into range.
Damn! If he’d taken off five minutes earlier, the TIEs would have missed him entirely. Now Thane would have to shoot his way to freedom.
But TIE fighters weren’t as sturdy as walkers. They provided almost no protection for their pilots—which was the main reason why being a TIE pilot was so revered in the Imperial Starfleet. Flying one of those things took guts.
Knowing that didn’t make it easier for Thane to shoot the TIE fighters down, but he did it anyway. As his blaster bolts raked across one of the TIEs, a shower of green sparks flumed into the air, and then the ship was spiraling down, wings clipped, falling to its doom.
Thane had experienced that in TIE fighter simulators. He knew what it looked like from the inside.
This was a war. They’d all chosen their sides. So Thane accelerated upward, not bothering to watch on sensors as the TIE fighter crashed to the ground.
As soon as the space outside his X-wing had turned black and the sensors showed all clear, he laid in a course for the rendezvous coordinates and prepared for the leap to l
ightspeed. Only in the last moments did he see the Imperial fleet amassed off his starboard side, so enormous that even the darkness of space did not dwarf it. There was no time to study it in detail, hardly even a flash of silver before the stars changed from points into a tunnel and his engines whined as his ship leaped into lightspeed.
Thane felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He knew what he’d seen in that final split-second view of the Imperial fleet: a Super Star Destroyer.
When I left, Ciena was assigned to the Devastator. They’d never post her to any ship smaller than a Star Destroyer again. By now she probably isn’t assigned on TIE patrols very often, but she could be—and she’d volunteer just for the joy of flying.
He was being ridiculous. Of the many Star Destroyers under the Emperor’s control, what were the odds that a particular one would be assigned to that battle, on that day?
But however remote the chances were, the possibility was real. And now, sickened by fear, Thane realized the TIE pilot he’d just killed could have been Ciena. It was no less likely to be her than any other pilot in the fleet. If so, he hadn’t even bothered to watch her die.
The worst part was that he would never know.
THE METALLIC RASP of Lord Vader’s breathing echoed throughout the Executor’s bridge. Ciena knew better than to glance upward or give any other indication that she even realized he was there, standing on the higher level only a couple of meters above. Although she didn’t believe some of the wilder rumors about Darth Vader’s vindictiveness, by now she knew it was wisest not to draw his attention for any reason. His rages when he was displeased were legendary.
