Saga - Legends Flight of Destiny -- OC, Battle of Hoth

Title: Flight of Destiny
Genre: Action, Drama
Characters: Alexis Wentlas
Timeline: Battle of Hoth--Legends continuity
Summary: A young rebel stationed at Echo Base makes a fateful decision that could change her life forever as the Imperial invasion looms.

***

Hoth: 3 Days From Imperial Attack

The whine of TIE Interceptors blared over the cockpit speakers as Alexis Wentlas turned her freighter out of the way. The five craft--two forked wings between a ball cockpit--showed up as red blips upon her sensor screen even as their known specs and blueprints were emblazoned upon her targeting computer. Ahead of her own circular cockpit, kilometers away but still looming large in her view, was the wedge-shaped hulls of an Imperial-class Star destroyer and two of the smaller Interdictors.

"This is Gundark Lead," Alexis said. Her bulky headset sat precariously over her dark brown hair. Limp strands tangled themselves over the rotating microphone. "Keep these fighters off of me while I worry about the big ships." The gravity wells projected from the interdictors showed up as four large globes in 3D space on the sensor screens, preventing her or any of her escorts from escaping the dark nebula.

"That goes for you in my guns, too," she added. A quick and curt reply from the two turrets answered her in the affirmative.

She frowned as she kicked the right etheric rudder while rotating her control yoke, turning her YT-2400 freighter over on its axis and shifting it to the side to avoid an incoming barrage of turbolaser fire. The Alderan Lemures had the circular main hull of all of the YT-series of freighters, cut off in the back section by a large engine bank that blazed cyan in the darkness of space. Held off to the starboard side by two bracing arms was the cylindrical cockpit section.

The YT-2400 shook as laser cannon fire hits its shields. "I'm on him, Gundark Lead," a calm voice in a rural accent said.

"Copy that, Blue Leader," Alexis replied. She chanced a quick look down at her sensors and saw the TIE Interceptor that was directly behind her and the B-wing behind it. All around her ship TIE fighters disappeared as her gunners shot at anything other than the one dogged Imperial fighter that was directly behind her ship. One second the final TIE in her immediate vicinity was there, firing shots that jarred her in her pilot's seat, and the next it was gone. In her mind's eye she saw the shot that destroyed it: three blasts from laser cannons converging together that left the fighter nothing more than scraps of durasteel in the void.

"We're clear for now, Gundark Lead," Blue Leader said. "Now to just get past that Star Destroyer."

Alexis stared down the Star Destroyer, her free hand moving to shift power from her now practically useless weapons into her freighter's shields and engines. She licked her dry lips and tightened her grip upon her control yoke.

"Blue squadron, keep me covered and prepare for hyperspace at my lead." She turned to the navicomputer and entered the coordinates for the rebel rendezvous point. With the press of a button, the navigation computer began its minimum countdown to when the best course had been calculated.

"Now, let's..." The view of the star destroyer and its interdictor escorts flickered briefly before amassing into a mess of pixels and then blackness. Alexis sat in her seat, crossing her arms against her chest in annoyance. "What the kriff is this?" she said. She stood from her chair and opened the hatch where the escape pods would be in a normal ship.

Her face was hit immediately with the chilly air of Echo Base. The walls around her simulator pod and the dozen around it were made of laser mined ice, the floor was padded by crushed snow that acted like an insulating carpet. Alexis reached up as she exited the pod and donned the warm vest she had left there before entering.

The other simulators opened in near unison, pilots in their insulated orange flight suits stepping out. Seven humans--four men and three women--were accompanied by two insectoid Verpines that the others called The Twins, a Bothan, and an unrelated pair of Duros made up Blue Squadron. The Twins were chattering in their native tongue, an insectoid clicking sound that they used to avoid alienating their non-hiveminded comrades.

"You all, too?" Alexis asked.

"Yes," the first of the two twins said.

"As soon as you..."

"Prepared the jump to lightspeed..."

"Our simulators crashed."

Alexis moved her head between the two of them, the Verpine twins' habit of finishing the other's sentences causing a headache. She rubbed at her temples as a young technician rushed into the simulator room.

"I'm so sorry!" she said. The tech jogged up to Alexis's pod and connected her datapad to the control panel. The majority of Blue Squadron scattered as Alexis walked up to the tech.

"What happened?" she said.

The tech looked over her datapad and back to the connections. "Looks like the pod was never reset since it was used for a diagnostic sim last time. Thirteen ships running simmed navicomps at the same time must have triggered a failsafe."

Alexis frowned. "And who used it last time?"

The tech's face dropped. "Captain Solo, ma'am."

Any rage that Alexis had dissipated in an instant. Han Solo had been a hero of the Alliance ever since he had rescued Princess Leia from the dreaded Death Star. In the hours before she had joined Blue Squadron for their simulator run, he had ventured out into the twilight looking for Luke Skywalker. Now both were likely dead or soon to be.

Alexis nodded without another word.

"I can fix this up, Lieutenant, Commander," the tech said. "You can get in another run in about ten-fifteen minutes."

"This should be enough," Blue Leader said. "My squadron will take another flight tomorrow. Just get it fixed up by then."

"Of course, Commander Farlander," the tech said as she went to work.

Keyan Farlander turned to Alexis again. He was a young man, just a few years older than Alexis, with a round face framed by brown hair. "Thanks, again, for filling in for us."

Alexis shrugged. "You said you needed a freighter pilot and I happen to be one."

"Well, we usually get Tarrin Datch to fly when we sim blockade escapes, but him and the other Rogues are not really in the mood to run sims right now."

Alexis nodded solemnly. "I saw Klivian in the mess hall before I got here. He just looked so down."

Farlander smirked. "Hobbie always looks like that, even on his life day. But the Rogues, I just think that they're waiting for first light before heading out there and looking for Skywalker and Solo. I hope they like what they find." He looked past her, towards another one of his pilots that was motioning him their way. "Gotta go. Thanks again."

The conversation over, Alexis turned around and walked out of the sim room and into the adjacent control room. Two techs sat in front of a large bank of computers, relaxing after the last run of the evening. She walked over to one of them, a middle-aged man with a Chief Petty Officer rank emblem upon his uniform.

"You got the specs I sent you for my ship, right?" she asked.

He stammered slightly and pointed towards a datapad on the desk next to him. "O-of course, Lieutenant Wentlas." He picked it up and waved it in her direction. "I put them in just like you asked me to!"

An amused smirk crossed over Alexis's face. "Then you'd know that the starboard thrusters don't pack that much of a kick." She suppressed a chuckle. "And that the ventral turret guns haven't worked since they were shot off about a year and a half ago..."

The chief sat in his chair, dumbfounded before trying to spit out a few conciliatory words. Alexis reached over and grabbed her datapad back. "Just don't let it happen again, chief," she said. "People's lives could depend on it."

She walked out of the control room and towards her quarters, passing through the darkened hangar bay filled with snowspeeders, tarped starfighters, and the abandoned Millennium Falcon. Her eyes fell upon a lonely astromech droid standing near the sealed hangar doors, whistling quietly to himself with its sensor dish still upraised. He had been Skywalker's astromech, she thought. She wished that there was something that she could do to help but nothing came to her mind.

A chill shot through her jacket and raced down her spine. Alexis pulled the front of her jacket tight against her and shivered in the cold. No one could possibly survive out there, she thought. Not even a Jedi.

***

Echo Base: Hoth: Day of Imperial Attack

"What have I gotten myself into?"

Those six words floated constantly to the surface of Alexis's mind as she pulled the insulated flight suit over her body. Princess Leia herself had made the call for volunteers that morning, citing the need for anyone with any flight experience whatsoever to join the Alliance's delaying counterattack against the incoming Imperial forces.

So, it was without any initial hesitation that she'd said "yes." She threw the white flak jacket over her, wondering how such a thin mesh could even hope to stop anything short of a wayward twig let alone the shards of hot, jagged metal that flew out of the Imperial flak cannons. Alexis tucked that thought as far back in her mind as she could and picked up her helmet from her temporary locker. The helmet was new, with only the Starbird symbol of the Rebel Alliance on its right side.

"I was wondering when you'd get out of there," a thick voice said as she stepped out of the locker room. Its owner was a Bothan, a canid race that had long been supporters of the Alliance.

Alexis shook her head. "It's been a long time since I've had to suit up like this," she said. "Not since my Gundarks were on..."

Her copilot raised a hand. "We can swap war stories later," he said. "Commander Farlander is waiting for us in the hangar."
Alexis smiled a nervous grin. "Well, we shouldn't keep him waiting."

He let loose a fanged grin and patted her on the shoulder hard enough to break her balance. "Welcome to Blue Squadron!" His eyes traveled down to the crude blaster rifle next to her. "What are you bringing that along for?" He pointed to the small pistol in a holster near his hip. "These tend to work a lot better than those."

Alexis shrugged and swung the rifle over her shoulder. "I take this with me practically everywhere I go," she said. "My little good luck charm."

"Well, we're gonna need it."

Keyan Farlander was standing in front of 21 other pilots in the main hanger, the others in a loose semi-circle facing him. The young rebel saw Alexis and her new comrade as they stepped in the hangar and acknowledged them with a gesture.

"Okay, Blues," he said as they neared him. "The Rogues have the hard work, but we're just as important here." He pointed to a nearby display, the small outline of Echo Base floated above them all. He pointed towards the North entrance of the base, prompting a red marker to fly towards a series of blue markers in the distance.

"The Rogues are going to engage the main Imperial forces here on the plains," Farlander said. "We are going to fly south after launch." Another red marker flew north just slightly before banking quickly and heading towards the valleys past the sount entrance and the large freighters docked there.

"Our job is to protect our flanks from any Imperial maneuvers. We probably won't see any of the big walkers, but scouts aren't out of the question. We hold them off until most of the transports are away and then we get to our starships here." He pointed to the south entrance."

Alexis cleared her throat. "Commander, what am I supposed to do, then? I don't have a starfighter."

Keyan looked down at the ground for a split second before facing her. "There'll be starfighters left for you to take your pick." The Bothan next to her exhaled deeply at the implication. "Lieutenant Wentlas, you're with Lt. Nay'yka there. He'll be your gunner. Blue Seven."

Alexis nodded and turned to her gunner as Farlander continued to pair up his pilots. "Gunner?" she said.

Tay'yka nodded as they headed towards their assigned speeder. "They've got a blaster cannon in the back, along with two lasers up front that you control," he said. He pointed towards another attachment at the back of the short, flat craft. "They've also got this magnetic harpoon gun." He gave a thick laugh. "We use 'em to haul cargo skiffs, but maybe we can throw some poor hovertanks around with it."

Alexis chuckled along with him and climbed into the front pilot seat after storing her blaster rifle into the small cargo space on the side of the hull.. She stared at the controls, familiarizing herself with them. They were similar to a regular civilian airspeeder, she noted. Repulsor controls, engine throttle, flight displays and the like were all very familiar to her. The only difference that she saw was a flight stick that had apparently been cobbled up from an X-wing.

"Blue Squadron, report in," Commander Farlander's voice said from the headset in her helmet.

Alexis looked down at her instrumentation, checking the fuel level and engine conditions.

"Guns are green, lieutenant," he said.

"Blue Seven is green and ready," Alexis reported. The others reported in and the order to take off was given.

The repulsors at the bottom of the snowspeeder hummed as Alexis edged the power switch forward. The craft vibrated as it lifted off of the hard-packed snow floor of the hangar before sitting in relative silence. Alexis smiled as she waited to take off, suddenly feeling invincible again.

The throttle was shoved forward as she gained her clearance to launch. The modified airspeeder accelerated out of its berth and out into the open. Up ahead of Blue Squadron, Rogue Squadron, led by the remarkably still alive Luke Skywalker, engaged the Imperial forces.

She could see the giant walkers: behemoths that plodded around the battlefield on four legs like some ancient beast of war.

"Oh, I'm glad that we don't have to face any of those..." Alexis murmured. She banked the snowspeeder back towards Echo Base's south entrance.

"Never say 'never'," Tay'yka said. "Slow down a bit and adjust course to 11.38," he relayed.

Alexis complied, pumping the rudders slightly to get her snowspeeder back on course. The eleven other snowspeeders flew around her craft, crossing over the hidden rebel base and into the opening in front of the south hangar. The ovoid Gallofree freighters sat on the tarmac, dots of the rebels around them moving about while getting the last bit of equipment that they could onto them.

"This is Blue Leader," Farlander commed in to the squadron. "Prepare to enter the valley. Blue Three and 5, I want you to fly above and watch for probe droids."

"Acknowledged, Commander," Blue Three or Five replied. "We'll..."

"Keep an eye out," their sibling added. The two Verpine raised their snowspeeders above the others, each one taking a side of the opening.

The valley itself was wide, nearly half a kilometer from one of the hill bases to the other. Alexis scanned the ice river of the glacier with her eyes, the orange goggles protecting her eyes from the bright glare.

"This is Blue Three to Blue Leader."

"We have not seen any evidence of Imperials in this sector."

"Save for Imperial landing shuttles heading to the north plains."

"I copy Blue Three and Five. Let's take this valley down to the north plains and we'll flank them there."

Alexis copied his orders and turned around for a second to face her gunner. "Have you gotten used to them yet?"

"I've flown with them for two years and I still haven't," he said.

"Well, it's already gotten old," Alexis said. She shook her head, somewhat angry at herself over her mild xenocentrism that was unbecoming of a Rebellion officer. Well, she thought, it's not like I want them slaughtered because they're annoying.

"We've got targets!" Blue Eleven called out. The small targeting suite in the cockpit beeped frantically as multiple red dots appeared on the screen. Alexis cycled through them on her targeting computer.

"Probe droids," she called out. "Looks like 10 of them."

The droids hovered in close formation, their black bodies standing out heavily against the white snow. Alexis dove her snowspeeder into an attack run and lined the nearest droid into her sights. Laser cannon fire burst out from both sides of her speeder as she squeezed the trigger, converging in the middle of the probe droid's circular midsection. The droid exploded into a shower of sparks, the legs that had once dangled beneath it now flying in the air.

She pulled out of her dive and angled her craft upwards into the air. Her Bothan gunner gave a short chuckle in thanks as he fired the rear-facing blaster into the mass of droids. The rest of Blue Squadron leveled out from their attack runs and continued down the valley.

"Nice shooting, Blues," Commander Farlander said. "Keep your eyes open and your sensors wide, because we're almost there."

"I've got a Sentinel shuttle at Mark 64.3," Blue Two said. Alexis turned her head to the proper direction and watched as the long-bodied tri-wing shuttle slowly descended. A large metal attachment clung to the bottom hull. "It's carrying a walker drop pod," Blue Two relayed.

"Copy that, take Blue Seven and Blue Nine and neutralize it."

"You heard the man, Blues," Blue Two said. "Form up on my wing and let's get 'im."

Alexis shifted her snowspeeder towards her new flight commander.

"They're heavily shielded, but the drop pod isn't," Blue Two said. "Go for it. Don't get into its front firing arc either. Those things pack missiles and aren't afraid to use them."

Alexis followed her lead and swung her snowspeeder around. The landing craft was now perpendicular to her craft, the broadsides of the drop-barge open. She opened fire and watched as the laser shots converged onto the middle. She cursed as she saw the minimal damage down to it.

A scream pierced through her ears as she dove under the descending shuttle. She turned to her right and watched as the fiery wreckage of Blue Nine's speeder fall into the ground. "Two, this is Seven," she said. "What happened to Nine?"

"I warned you to stay away from that thing's front for a reason, Seven." Blue Two's snowspeeder took a tight turn. "Now, get ready for our next pass." The shuttle continued its descent. "Looks like we're only going to have this last one," Two added.

"Copy that," Alexis said. She turned and cut the throttle as much as she dared. she pulled the trigger on her flight stick and didn't let go. Shot after shot hit the heavily armored barge, followed by Blue Two's fire.

"C'mon..." she pleaded. One of Blue Two's shots hit home just below the docking clamp. Sparksflew out and billowed into smoke before flaring out into a brilliant light.

"Got ya, you kriffer!" Alexis heard Two shout through her headset. The explosion spread further down and multiplied as the scout walkers inside exploded, and upwards as the cascading fires spread to the shuttle. She whooped as the explosions overtook the larger craft, sending it plummeting to the ground.

"Two, Seven, great job," Commander Farlander relayed seconds later. "Come back to the valley. Some visitors arrived while you were away."

Visitors were an understatement, Alexis thought as she and Blue Two returned to the valley. Three AT-STs and several hovercarriers had managed to head their way in the four minutes that the two had been gone. Concussion missiles flared through the sky, leaving thick trails of dark smoke that were penetrated by red laser blasts. The rest of Blue Squadron swarmed around the walkers like angry hornets, juking and diving to avoid the deadly firing arcs in front of the two-legged walkers. The hovercarriers were small rectangles of grey durasteel, the piloting section closed off. Two fire teams of stormtroopers stood in half-enclosed pockets on the sides. Two fire-linked blaster cannons were mounted in a turret near the rear of the carrier.

The turret on the Imperial troop transport farthest from Alexis fired at a passing snowspeeder, the orange bolts tearing through its weakly armored hull and disintegrating it. As the wreckage plummeted to the ice below, Alexis heard frantic screaming in Verpine through her headset. She couldn't understand the words, but the emotion behind them dropped her heart deeply into her gut.

The dead Verpine's sibling dove their snowspeeder towards the offending transport, laser cannons pouring a steady stream towards it. Bile rose in Alexis's throat as she watched the turret of the transport calmly turn towards the strafing speeder. She kicked the throttle forward and angled her own speeder towards the craft, shouting out a warning that fell on deaf tymanals.

The transport fired a single shot that slammed into the Verpine's cockpit. Alexis pulled out of her dive as the Verpine's destroyed speeder slammed into its killer.

Alexis leveled her speeder out from her aborted dive and fired into the back of an AT-ST. "I hit him hard," she announced as she pulled off her vector. "I'm going to make another pass."

"I'll cover you, Blue Seven," Blue Eight replied. The other snowspeeder formed up on her port wing, flaps adjusting for position.

The two snowspeeders dove towards the walker, blaster fire converging upon the concussion missile launcher. Flames burst out of the two viewports in front of the walker and out of the entry hatch inside as the exploding munitions cooked off.

A frenetic beeping filled Alexis's ears. "Missile lock!" her gunner cried out.

She kicked the rudder so hard that she thought it would break as she tore at the flight stick. A bright bulb of energy passed her by, traveling ten meters ahead of her speeder before exploding into a dark cloud. Tiny shards of metal, any momentum from the explosion gone, plinked harmlessly off her hull like beads of water.

Her gunner laughed. "That was too close for comfort," he said.

"Thanks for the heads up," Alexis replied.

"See that walker at 174.32?" The walker in question was patched nearly instantly onto the targeting screen in front of her. "Let's make a run on that one."

Alexis turned the snowspeeder around. "I've got him," she said. She licked her cold lips and took a deep breath in. The first shot hit and then the second.

"Oh shavit," she cursed as the boxy head turned towards her. She juked as blaster fire filled the air around her. "I need help here!" she cried out to anyone that was listening.

"I'll get his attention, Seven," Blue Two replied too late.

A concussion missile glared to life at the end of the launcher as Alexis pulled against her controls with all her might. The Hoth sky was a brilliant blue as it filled her vision, replaced by the snowy hills surrounding the valley. A loud explosion nearly deafened her as it blossomed behind her. Something punched her back, hard enough to tear the breath out of her lungs. She gasped for air as her snowspeeder raced towards the ground.

Both hands clutched the flight stick, her knuckles white under the warm gloves. What was left of her ship shuddered under the strain but remained steady in its still far too steep descent. Alarms blared out their useless symphony. Images of her family flashed before her eyes: her father and mother on their ship, the family that had perished on Alderaan when the Death Star destroyed the entire planet, every one of her friends that had come and gone in Gundark Squad.

Her frightened scream filled the snowspeeder, overcoming the sound of the battle around her. The ice and snow beckoned and darkness swallowed her.

***

Hoth -- 30 Minutes Later

Keyan Farlander surveyed the scene as best he could from the cockpit of his B-wing. Destroyed Imperial walkers and rebel snowspeeders threw dark smoke up into the air that made seeing anything a near impossibility. He guided the cross-shaped fighter over the carnage in the valley.

The Verpine twins--V'rex and V'tex--had been killed almost simultaneously, he thought. After nearly a year of flying with them, the bond that had made them so effective in battle had been their undoing. He passed wreckage after wreckage in the valley: 24 beings had been in Blue Squadron when they had left the hangar in Echo Base, now only six of them remained to leave the planet.

He passed by Blue Seven's smoldering snowspeeder, the rear section a tangle of spalled metal. Tay'yka in the gunner's seat had been one of his best shots and the pilot had been a volunteer. An admiral's daughter, he remembered as he passed the craft. He'd have to deliver the news to her family personally, he decided.

Farlander closed his eyes and allowed himself to flow deeply into the Force, he reached out his senses, hoping to find someone--anyone--that was still alive in the wreckage.

His sensors beeped loudly, throwing him out of his temporary trance. He looked down at his scopes to see a squadron of TIE fighters beginning their approach. He lowered the s-foils on his fighter and made for space.


Inside of the crashed snowspeeder, the shallow breathing of the unconscious Alexis and her gunner sent small clouds into the cold air.

***

Spoiler: Author's Notes

* This is the chronologically first Alexis Wentlas story. It would be followed by Survival Instinct, Surviving Hope, Breakout, The Long Road to Recovery, and Graverobbers of Alderaan.

* Alexis's callsign of Gundark Lead is a reference to an old RPG campaign that I played the character in. The damage to the Alderan Lemures that's referenced in the same scene was something lifted from said campaign.

* Writing the two twin Verpines was both fun and frustrating write. Of course, they're not really twins, biologically speaking, but it's just a nickname that their other squadmates have given them.

* I purposefully left a lot of the members of Blue Squadron as vague, nameless pilots just in case I want to do something with them down the line.

* Thanks go to Chyntuck for helping me on the early Hoth timeline at this part.

* Farlander's mention of Rogue Squadron pilot Tarrin Datch filling in with them on some sims is a reference to the latter's origin as mentioned in the West End Games Empire Strikes Back Galaxy Guide.

* Alexis bringing her blaster rifle along was a last minute inclusion, as I forget about her having it in Survival Instinct.

* A lot was cut from this story, including a subplot that had nothing to do with the main narrative where Alexis leads a platoon against some invading wampas, as well as a scene where she meets Dash Rendar while admiring the Outrider, also a YT-2400 freighter.

 

If I may say...that's an odd way to write stories in. And you totally didn't hear that from somebody who started an epic without clue, concept or any sanity to it, and then built a whole universe around it.

It's always nice to see more of Alexis, of course.

LOL. No wonder that Han crashed the simulator. But...Chewbacca could have helped fix it, perhaps? Alexis' assumption that both Luke and Han will be/are dead is interesting, especially given everything that will happen to her in the next stories. That said, the assumption at the end of part one is...interesting, too.

Aaand there's 11.38...

The idea of more than one probe droid never crossed my mind. Ouch!

And the ending is...devastating, to say the least. The part where Alexis and her gunner can hear the Verpines die just adds insult to the injury.


P.S. Your forgot-to-press-space thing happened here, too. Watch out for that.

 

I think I take anachronistic order to the extreme in this series. The last one was either ~30 years before this one or 25 years after.

She's a ball to write, even when I'm not horribly torturing her or her family.

I'm not sure if I wrote that as clear as I could have. Han was using the simulator that Alexis was in to see if the Falcon's hyperdrive was working, and that required actually running a navicomputer to calculate routes. The techs in charge, not being all that observant (he missed that Alexis's specs for her own ship was missing a belly gun...), didn't unplug it. The stress of 13 ships or so running actual calculations to lightspeed crashed the entire program.

The strange thing is that I usually don't put that in. I don't know, I was just feeling it this time.

Probe droids appeared as minor enemies in several video game variations of the Battle of Hoth, most notably Rogue Squadron 2 and Shadows of the Empire. I just wanted something else familiar than just the AT-ST, especially since I brought in a Kenner toy that also made appearances in Star Wars Rebels.

They heard a lot of their comrades die, but I really wanted the Verpines to hit hard. They were introduced with an eccentric way of speaking as kind of a hint that if one died the other would not take it well.

Oh, how I hate that damn thing. I've noticed that it seems to hate the word "Alliance", which is right up there with "Empire" in Star Wars fics, so I specifically looked for it after I hit paste. Turns out it does that while posting... Thanks for the heads up.