Saga - Legends Survival Instinct (OC, Battle of Hoth, Completed 04/08)

Title: Survival Instinct
Author: whiskers
Summary: In the aftermath of the Battle of Hoth, a shot down Rebel pilot must make her way off planet. Partially inspired by "Hoth Stuff" a Marvel Star Wars story.


Pain made its way through Alexis' body, a dull throb emanating from her legs and her back. It ebbed and flowed through her like a lake that she remembered from long ago. A lake that now existed only in memories. A subtle breeze of freezing cold air nipped at her partially exposed face and she opened her eyes.

The cockpit of the T-47 Airspeeder was in disarray. The console in front of her idly sparked from its busted controls, the sound of it audible over the light wind. From her seat she could only look ahead outside of the transparisteel canopy. Through the spider webs of cracks she could see the front of the craft, the majority of the starboard front missing, the metal twisted up as if to reach inside and grab her. The port side of the craft was buried under the deep snow.

Why am I here? The thought came to her as she looked around the area. She was in the middle of a snow plain nestled in a valley, mountains blocking her view to the left and right. An Imperial scout walker stood nearly 100 meters away, its headless legs somehow managing to stay upright while it's smoking head billowed meters away from them.

The memories rushed back to her as she slowly undid her crash webbing, the movement sending another slow wave of pain throughout her body. The Empire had discovered the Rebel's base on Hoth and had landed ground troops. Blue Squadron and Rogue Squadrons required as many pilots as they could find to fend off the large armored walkers supporting the ground troops. She had volunteered. Why had she volunteered? She didn't know that much about piloting starfighters or airspeeders? But she did know enough, she thought grimly. Or at least she believed she did.

She braced herself for more pain as she reached towards the canopy released on her console and was surprised when her body didn't protest as much as she thought it would. The latch popped when she pulled it, causing the canopy to spring upwards. She gritted her teeth and pulled herself up from her seat. A wave of pain erupted from her leg as she tried to stand, overcoming her threshold and dropping her back into her seat. She cried out in pain as what felt like an invisible knife dug its way through her lower back. Her scream echoed throughout the small valley.

"C'mon, Alexis," she said as the pain ebbed away. Nothing was broken inside of her, she thought. It couldn't be. Not if she wanted to get out of this thing alive. She cried out again, a preemptive cry to mentally dull the pain as she pulled herself up again. The same wave from her leg rippled again, but less this time. Her left leg straightened and then her right and she found herself standing in the cockpit of her crashed airspeeder. She swung her leg over the side of the craft, bracing her arms on the very edge of the compartment. "One more..." she said, swinging her last leg up and over.

She took a step off of the broken and scarred wing and felt her leg slip out from under her. The ground upended in her vision and she felt the soft thud of her body landing in the snow. She lay there, back once again protesting wildly. Even through her specially padded flight suit, she could feel the cold begin to seep its way through. Her rapid, ragged breaths left her lungs and floated through the air in front of her. It would be easy to just lie there, a cruel voice in the back of her head taunted her. It would be easy to just wait for the end to come.

Kriff that, she thought loudly. She rolled over onto her stomach, ignoring the pain that passed over her. She pushed up, lifting her body enough to plant one foot onto the snowy ground and then another. She stood straight, the pain slowly beginning to fade. She took a tentative step towards the speeder and then another, slowly testing her legs to see if they would hold her weight. She took another step and then stopped. In the gunner's seat, slouched lifelessly into his crash webbing, was a Bothan male in the same orange flight suit that she was wearing.

She hurried as fast as she could over to him. He was one of Blue Squadron's regular members, she knew. He had been assigned to her speeder as the gunner for reasons she couldn't quite understand. He had told her his name before they took off, but for her life Alexis could not remember it. Bracing herself onto the canopy's edge, she climbed onto the wing, taking great care not to slip once again. Clouds of breath slowly rolled out of his canine snout, alerting her that he was still alive. Towards his stomach, his orange flight suit was stained crimson with blood from at least two small-sized punctures.

How? she thought as she undid his crash webbing. The memory slowly rolled out of the haze of her mind. She was piloting the airspeeder along with the rest of Blue Squadron. Scout walkers had been seen by the Rogues trying to flank the forward base and the Blues had been sent take them out. She remembered diving towards one scout, her gunner expertly triggering the laser cannons. She passed the walker and then the memories were replaced by even more fog. She turned her head to look at one of the destroyed walkers in the distance. One of them had to have been responsible.

She turned her attention back to her wounded gunner. He was still unconscious but still breathing. She examined his wounds the best that she could from her vantage point. Some shrapnel, possibly from the shot that knocked out their speeder, had punctured his stomach in two places. The blood had already clotted. How long had she been out? She shook the thoughts of the past out of her head and focused on the future. She didn't know if he would live if she tried to move him out of the cockpit, but his death was certain if she didn't. She couldn't leave him behind to die. Not if there was even the slightest chance of both of them making it out alive.

Alexis climbed back into her seat, helmeted head bumping against the open canopy. She leaned down and gently pushed her gunner forward, locking her arms under his shoulders. She took several deep breaths, preparing herself for what was to come. She mentally counted down. Three.. She clasped her hands together around his chest. Two...She exhaled her last breath, paying no attention as the transparisteel fogged up.

One... She straightened her back and lifted her legs, ignoring the pain from her own body as she struggled to lift her copilot from his seat. She raised him out of the broken craft slowly, muscles in her arms and back burning with the strain. Finally she was able to pull the Bothan's broken and unconscious body from the cockpit, gingerly placing him on the wing.

She sat down of the fuselage of the craft, trying to catch her breath. Already she could feel the beads of sweat trailing down from her forehead begin to freeze in the air. She stood up from the wing and headed to the airspeeder's small cargo compartment. The hatch opened easily, revealing an orange-colored survival kit and a blaster rifle. The blaster rifle was small, only 3/4 of a meter long and a thin column of black metal. A black, rectangular energy cell jutted off to the side of the barrel, making an impromptu handle. She inspected the folding stock for any damage and then looped the leather sling around her shoulder before taking the survival kit over to the injured Bothan. He was still breathing, she saw to her relief. She rummaged through the kit, finding a package of Bacta patches in the small amount of medical supplies. Taking two of the patches out of their packaging, Alexis gingerly removed the life support system from his chest and unzipped the heavily padded suit. The two shrapnel wounds were found in the upper stomach of the Bothan and had penetrated deeply into his body. One bloody exit wound was on his back and matched the hole in the seat. She found the culprit at the bottom of her own chair: a jagged metal fragment the size of a decicred.

"Damn it," she said. "They got you good." She placed the bacta soaked patches over the wounds and sealed them to his body with adhesive. She zipped up his flight suit and walked back to the field kit, returning with the thick survival blanket stored within. She couldn't stay there with him, she knew. She stole a quick glance at the system's star in the sky and estimated that it was about early afternoon. The temperatures would just now begin to reach their highest and would fall dramatically as soon as the star set in the sky. She shivered automatically. Even the native tauntauns couldn't survive the night temperatures. Echo Base, or what was left of it, had to be over ten kilometers away. The wind picked up, causing the canopy to blow against its restraints with a loud thump. A smile slowly formed on Alexis' face.

She laid the Bothan onto the canopy, survival blanket wrapped around him. She had placed two blaster shots into the transparisteel sides of her makeshift sled and ran a single shortened tow cable through them. The cable pressed against her chest uncomfortably as she made her way through the snow. Her boots crunched as they sank into the powder, coming up to just below her ankle. Alexis had been walking for what she estimated to be an hour now, dragging the still unconscious gunner along with her. It was slow, arduous work that strained nearly every single muscle that she knew she had. Her legs were burning with the exertion of walking through the snow, having to lift her legs higher than they were used to just to get over the surface.

Alexis didn't look back to see how far she was from her crashed airspeeder. She didn't out of fear; fear that if she looked back she'd see just how close she still was to the speeder. Her eyes stayed forward, preferring to see how far she had to go. A small voice whispered in the back of her head. "You can't make it," it said as it had said many times before in the hour that she had been walking. "Not with him, at least." The doubt chewed at her insides. She gave in to it for a second, glancing up at Hoth's same-named star in the sky above. It was already perilously close to being 3/4 of its way to the journey. A quick mental estimate gave her about three, maybe four hours until night fall. She could make it back to Echo Base in that time easily, she thought.

If there still was an Echo Base to get back to... If there weren't any snowtroopers and walkers patrolling the area for stragglers such as herself... If... If... If... That word haunted her, pulling at her with even more weight than the injured rebel that she was dragging. She would find out when she got there, she told herself.

She passed the last mountain nearly two hours later. The sun beaming through the open plains and warming her body and spirit after a half hour of walking through the artificial twilight. The smoke in the distance chilled it once again. Kilometers ahead she could see the remains of the base's shield, the metal of the outer cylinders blown outwards. Smoke poured from the mangled forms. Destroyed Imperial walkers littered the field, their several meter long legs buckled under themselves and the large square hulls sticking diagonally into the air. Crashed snowspeeders and Imperial landing craft burned in the foreground.

Alexis turned to look at her passenger. The Bothan was still breathing, she could see, but the breaths came shallow and fast. She eyed the nearest toppled assault walker. It was nearly a kilometer away, but possible. Her own breath was ragged, the cold air burning her lungs. With a determined cry, she continued pushing her makeshift sled.

She arrived at the walker over an hour later, the sun now perilously close to dipping below the horizon. She dropped the cable, which had long ago been transferred from her chest to being looped around her shoulders. The dead mechanical beast loomed above her, the very rear end of the craft raising at least 30 meters into the air. She raised her blaster rifle as she approached the ruins.

She climbed through the large hole in the side of the walker's hull, blaster rifle held high. She had heard somewhere that the larger assault walkers could hold a platoon of stormtroopers. Her glowlight shined through the darkness of the inner hold. illuminated scattered equipment and armor. There were no stormtroopers, no bodies. She allowed herself a brief spot of relief. She would have to somehow drag her badly wounded gunner into the walker and the thought of dragging Imperial bodies out of the craft filled her with dread.

She sat down inside the crew compartment of the walker, huddled as close to the portable heater that she could. Somehow she had been able to get the Bothan inside of the downed walker and propped up. His condition had deteriorated vastly since the crash site. His breathing was extremely shallow and his skin burned with some sort of fever. The medical kit's thermometer had been no use to her, since she had no idea what the normal body temperature was for Bothans. She had injected him with another syringe of an antibiotic and changed the bacta patches. Anything to make him comfortable in his last moments.

Last moments. The thought of it hit Alexis hard. She had travelled kilometers away from her crash site, dragging him behind her. It had taxed her body immensely and had slowed her down considerably. Was it all for nothing? The exhaustion from her trek overwhelmed her, muscles cramping and burning from the exertion. Her head swam with hunger. She picked up the field kit next to her and rummaged around for the ration packs inside. She picked up a protein bar and unwrapped it. It was made of some sort of Agamarian grain and an Ithorian starfruit. She bit into it and savored the sweetness. A memory floated back to the front of her mind, of when she had visited Ithor with her parents nearly 10 years previously. She had been nine years old and her father's frigate was transporting some Alderaanian diplomats to meet with the Ithorian herdship Bonafarr's Garden. Her parents and her dined with the diplomat that night, a fine blend of Ithorian-grown fruits in the middle of the table.

"I don't know what to do," she said aloud. "I don't know if I'm going to make it out."

"You're going to do your best, like you've always done," she thought back, her father's voice replacing her own in her mind. He would always say something like that to her whenever she was discouraged by something. "You can't quit," he would say. She closed her eyes and she could almost see him. "You've come so far already."

"I'm so tired, dad," Alexis murmured. The warmth of the heater flowed through the compartment, adding to the weight on her eyes.

"Get some sleep, then," she pretended that he said. "In the morning, you're going to finish this. You're going to come back to us."

"Yeah," she slurred, her head drooping down to rest on her chest. "Morning."

 

Alexis dreamt of Alderaan. It had been her mother's home once, before the Empire had destroyed it years ago. It was the Killik mounds in the Castle Lands she was visiting, large round mounds of spit-creted dirt rising up to a kilometer in the sky. It was one of her family's frequent but brief holidays on Alderaan between his deployments and she was standing in awe of them while her parents prepared their light lunches. The sun shone down on her and she delighted in feeling the summer heat on her face and bare arms. An electronic voice sounded in the distance.

Her eyes snapped open. The warmth of the Alderaanian sun was gone, replaced by the ever-present coldness of the ice planet Hoth. A small portable heater placed between her and a dying Bothan provided the sole source of heat. The electronic voice remained. It spoke in a language that she couldn't understand and the faint hum of a repulsorlift could be heard from outside of the damaged walker. She picked up the blaster rifle laying to her side, left hand grasping the large energy cell jutting off 90 degrees to the side of the weapon.

She stood up, her legs screaming at her in pain. She bit down on her lip to prevent any inadvertent utterance from escaping her. The humming of the repulsors drew closer, and so did the strange voice. She climbed out of the torn metal opening of the walker and jumped out into the snow. Her boots sank into the snow, crunching underneath. The sun was out in the eastern sky, casting long shadows of the mountains over the area.

Hovering near the upturned rear section of the Imperial walker was a droid. A bulbous head attached to a long round thorax of black metal. Five or six spindly arms hung below its body, each holding a different tool. A probe droid, Alexis thought. She carefully raised her blaster rifle to aim at the droid and flicked the switch to change it to automatic fire. The droid turned around upon somehow hearing the click, bringing its small blaster cannon around and zipping to the left. Alexis aimed for the droid, squeezing off a salvo of bolts that it quickly dodged. It returned fire, hitting the hull of the walker as it moved. Alexis followed it, leading the droid as it zipped through the air. She fired again, two of the five bolts that she fired landing squarely in the middle droid's body. Its repulsors failed, sending the droid crashing to the snowy ground. Alexis walked over to the fallen droid and poured seconds of blaster fire into its head.

She stood over the wreckage, panting from the brief amount of exertion. She gazed at the sky again. When she had taken refuge in the walker it had just been at the very edge of twilight. Had she slept that long? she thought at the late morning sun. The Bothan, she thought, racing back into the disabled walker.

He was leaned up against the sloping wall, the survival kit's heavy duty blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His eyes were closed just as they had been ever since Alexis had regained consciousness from the crash. No breath steamed from his snout. Alexis walked over to him, taking a glove off and placing the bare hand under his nostrils. Nothing. "I'm sorry," she said as she pulled the blanket over his head.

Was there anything that she could have done? That thought raced through her head. Maybe if she had better medical training, she thought, but she had the basics that they taught her when she first began her training as a Rebel officer. It was simple first aid, nothing that could help more severely injured comrades. That was a job for the trained medics in an infantry squad. She had done everything that she could. That thought provided little comfort to her but what it did was enough.

Alexis' thoughts returned to the probe droid that she had just destroyed. It had been searching for something amidst the battle field. Imperial survivors? Rebel holdouts? She didn't really care what its original purpose was, she thought as she began to scale the diagonal seats up towards the rear of the craft. These walkers generally carried some sort of speeder bike in them, she thought as she reached the top of the seats. She looked up at the speeder bike rack meters above her and saw that all but two were still there. She reached up towards the racks, finding them out of reach. She jumped towards them, fingers barely touching the metal compartments. She jumped again, pain running through her fingers as they just barely grabbed the edge.

Another try and she was rewarded when she finally found purchase in the rack. It took her another four minutes before she was able to climb up into the hold. She rested against the empty hold and swung herself towards the control panel to the side. Thankful that the power cells of the walker were still active, she pressed the button to open the garage door. The hatch opened to the outside, sending a gust of cold wind into the walker as the pressure equalized. She hung on to the rack she was on and lowered the speeder bike below her to the ground. It rested a meter above the ground, suspended by a sturdy metal cable.

Alexis crawled out of her resting place and climbed down the interior of the tilted walker. Placing her helmet back on, she took a final look at the Imperial machine that had served as her shelter for the past day. Just yesterday, that very same walker had tried to kill her and the rest of her compatriots only to save her life during the cold night. "Don't let anyone say that I didn't find you a hell of a tomb," she whispered to the fallen Bothan inside. She walked to the tethered landspeeder, untied it from its moorings, and took off for Echo Base.

She arrived at the front hangar in a matter of minutes, parking the speeder just inside of it. It was built into the side of a large ice mountain, rooms carved into the ice using construction droids. Large inlets in the walls that had stored starfighters and airspeeders just a day ago were now empty, the tell-tale tracks of their landing gear serving as a ghost to the frantic days previously. She held her blaster rifle in front of her and listened. The Empire surely had to have left at least a squad behind to deal with any stragglers, she thought. Especially if they still had probe droids scouring the battle field. She heard nothing and stepped through the closest door.

The large south entrance, she thought as she walked through the nearest door that led deep into the base. The narrow corridor widened into a large room, a repugnant smell assaulting her nostrils as she entered. Nerf-leather saddles and riding blankets lined the walls and were scattered on the floor. The tauntauns, she remembered. The rebels had kept them here in a pen. The door to that pen was open, several four-toed tracks leading out of it. Their handlers, before they fled for their own lives, must have let them loose. She continued through the room and into the next corridor.

She followed the corridor right past the command and stopped in fear when she saw the first flash of stormtrooper armor. The body was laying on the ground in front of a large durasteel door, copper-red dried blood staining the hard-packed snow floor as detached limbs and the torso were strewn about. She powered up her blaster rifle again, the familiar hum of the already primed weapon a comforting sound to her straining ears. It wasn't the first body that she had seen in the base, but it was easily the one in the woest condition. Whatever had brutally mauled that Imperial, she thought as she slowly made her way forward, had a decent chance of still being the base. Unnerved, she continued forward.

Alexis reached the blocked passageway a minute later and kicked at it in frustration. He foot struck the obscuring snow and ice and managed to clear only a millimeter of it. Tired and frustrated, she turned away and walked past the mutilated corpse of the stormtrooper, looking for an alternate way out.

Echo Base was a maze of corridors, she decided as she entered the medical center. A deactivated surgery droid stood in a corner, it's multitude of arms coming from a central spire hanging limp towards the ground. There hadn't been any wounded stationed there when the battle began, she thought as she passed empty bed after empty bed, but the evacuation had been thorough save for the disabled droid. Drawers filled with medpacks and surgical equipment were open with only the bare minimum of supplies still remaining.

"Rebel!" she heard and she instinctively pressed herself against the wall, blaster rifle at the ready. The heavily filtered voice of the snowtrooper had come from deeper into the medical center. Alexis' heart beat rapidly in her chest as she readied herself for the attack to come. The white-armored figure raced into the room and immediately caught a burst of blaster fire to the chest. She raced for cover as the two other soldiers entered behind their dead comrade, their blasters firing wildly. She knelt behind the medi-bed, raising her blaster rifle up above it and firing blindly in their general direction.

She looked to her right and saw the open door leading to the head surgeon's office and the morgue beyond. It was a grim enough place to fight, she thought, but there wouldn't be an easy place to throw grenades in there. She fired another blind burst and then sprinted towards the open door. She reached the halfway point when she felt the burning punch hit her just above the knee. Alexis collapsed to the floor, her blaster rifle sliding away into the office. She clawed at the ground, moving millimeter by millimeter into the room and closer to her rifle. Her entire right leg from just above the knee where she had been hit burned with pain.

"Set your blaster to stun," she heard a voice say from in the main room. "The admiral wants prisoners."

"Yes, sir," what sounded like the same voice replied.

Alexis reached out for her blaster rifle, ignoring the intense pain in her leg and the dizziness beginning to come over her. Her fingers closed around the strap when a blue light lit the room and her vision went black.

 

Great cliffie there!

 

Glad to see another of your Rebel stories here. This is a really compelling adventure story so far, and it looks like the twists and turns have just begun. Alexis's thoughts during the struggle to move the wounded Bothan and his inevitable death were done really well; the reactions seemed very real. I like the sense we get of Alexis's personality and experiences -- she's already lost a homeworld, but the lone survival thing is not her usual job. But she does what she needs to, anyway, and without panicking. And I was glad that someone had thought of the tauntauns enough to let them go before evacuating the base. That's a nice bit of insight into the people -- someone there was at least concerned for their animals, if not fond of the cantankerous beasts.

 

Ironically, it wasn't meant to be a "cliffhanger." I originally wrote this entire thing as one long 7k word story, but decided to break it up into three parts for publishing. I found this to be a natural cliffhanger.

I always love writing in the Inter-trilogy/Rebellion era. So many interesting stories to the tell and connections to make.

I wanted to make this second act be where things came crashing down on Alexis. She's exhausted from the journey to the walker and realizes that it was all for naught, she makes it to Echo Base and finds the most direct passage to where she needs to go blocked, she finds an alternate path but is seriously wounded and captured by the Empire. As for the Bothan, I initially wondered if I should make it someone that she knew, but I decided that it would probably work better if she had never met him before.

She's already lost a home, which I really felt connected to some of my recent work and for good reason. And as for Alexis' personality, I see her at the start of this tale to be unnecessarily bold and cocky to an extent while still being a compassionate and strong-willed individual. I saw this short story as a kind of crucible for her, where her flaws catch up to her in a major way yet her positive traits help her to survive it, hence no panicking.

That was somewhat inspired by a deleted scene of C-3PO removing the warning sign from the door that the Wampas were captured in, and I left that poor mangled Stormtrooper near that door (thanks for the cross-section, DK books) as a bit of homage to it. And I would think that those responsible for caring for the tauntauns would come to at least tolerate them enough to set them free once the evacuation order was given.

Thank you both for reading and commenting, I appreciate it as always. Part III should be coming out in the next week.

 

I like that "next week" part, as it will take me a little more to sort these notes.

 

And here's the final part. Hope everyone enjoyed it.

***

Alexis's eyes opened abruptly. The room she was in was dark, the faintest of illumination coming from small lights in the durasteel-grey ceiling of the room. The walls were of the same color in the three meter by three meter cell. She lay on a hard metal bed, the coldness of it sinking through her undershirt and pants. She could feel it through her dark hair into her scalp, on the back of her bare arms, on her leg.

She stopped thinking abruptly. Her leg? Only one? She sat up in the uncomfortable bed and looked down at her lower body. She followed the trail of caramel-colored skin from where the grey shorts began until it ended abruptly in a mass of steel. A simple ball and socket joint served as a knee, hardened wires connecting the thigh prosthetic to the leg. The metal foot at the end of the bed was roughly the same size of her natural foot, five pistoned metatarsals jutted off from the wheel-shaped joint.

Alexis stared at the mechanical replacement as the cell's lights brightened as a result of her movement. They had given her one of the most basic models, she thought as she examined it. One without any synthskin covering it or even any tactile sensors to replicate the sense of touch. The fact that they gave her a leg at all filled her with a slight bit of hope that they hadn't planned on simply executing her, otherwise they would have just let her bleed to death back on Echo Base. She stared at the knee and tried to get it to move. It had been so easy before, she thought as she watched the prosthetic move barely a millimeter.

The door opened two hours later, a yellow-haired Imperial officer standing in front of it. "Prisoner #315593, you will come with me," he said as he placed the code cylinder back into the pocket of his black uniform. Alexis leaned out of the metal cot and placed both of her legs on the floor. She struggled to stand, her healthy left leg easily up to the mundane task but her new prosthetic felt heavy and refused to bend easily. She stood, the numbness on her right side throwing off her balance.

"If you require a hoverchair," the Imperial officer said, "I'll be sure to requisition one." She remained silent to his snide remark and took a tentative step forward, her new leg easily carrying her weight. She limped her way out, keeping it as straight as she could to minimize the possibility of her falling. She'd be interrogated now that she was awake, she thought. She had heard all of the horror stories about Imperial interrogation and had been trained as best she could to mentally resist any drugs she could be injected with from an interrogation droid.

It was waiting for her outside of a room several meters away, a black sphere floating in the air. A red light shined from its southern hemisphere, burning deep into her eyes as she passed it. Inside the small room was a metal table with two chairs, an Imperial officer setting behind it. "Take your seat," the first officer's stormtrooper escort said, pushing at her with the butt of his blaster rifle. She complied as best she could.

The officer at the table wore the red uniform of the Imperial Security Bureau and kept his reddish-orange hair cut short. His face was expressionless. "What were you doing on Hoth?" he said. It was a simple question, one that both of them knew the answer to.

"Lieutenant Alexis Wentlas from Alderaan," she said. "Number 381127." It was all that she had been trained to reply when she first began her training as a soldier for the Rebellion: name, rank, homeworld and serial number. Alexis stared at the ISB officer, trying to gauge his reaction.

"The standard, then," he said, his face unmoving. "And Alderaan," he added. "Yet with the hint of a Coruscanti accent." He looked her over. "How did that happen?"

"Lt. Alexis Wentlas," she said, giving him the exact information as before.

"You know exactly why you're here," he said. His lips were a thin line beneath a small nose. He made a gesture to the door. "You know why you're here," he repeated, "and you know what's waiting for you behind that door." He made a beckoning gesture and the door hissed open. The hum of a small repulsorlift moved to the opening. Gooseflesh prickled on Alexis' skin, her the hair on the back of her neck feeling as if it was standing straight on end. With a cutting gesture from the officer, the hum moved away from the door.

"Now," he said. "Where were you supposed to meet up with your rebel friends?" He folded his hands in front of him and rested them upon the table. "You're trying my patience," he said as he received the same answer he had gotten from the last two questions. "It's not wise to do that." His face showed no sense of anger or frustration, just an unyielding ferrosteel mask. He gestured again and the door hissed open again. The humming grew louder and louder still behind her as the droid floated into the room. The door slammed shut behind it.

She woke up the next day when a small flimsiplast cup was shoved into the cell with her, filled with an unappetizing nutrition paste. Her mind still foggy from the drugs that the droid has used upon her, she stayed laying down on the metal cot. She had given them nothing useful, she thought, and they had tossed her back into her cell along with a gray prisoner's jumpsuit. She had nearly torn the right leg apart getting it over her cybernetic replacement, but she had eventually gotten fully dressed despite every nerve in her body being on fire at the time.

Alexis slowly limped to the door and looked at the cup of paste. Each step she took on her flesh and bone foot burned in the aftermath of the nerve-affecting toxin that they had given her. Each fraction of movement of the jumpsuit on her skin was as if a rough cloth were being dragged across her flesh. Her stomach growled hungrily at the contents of the cup. How long had it been since she last ate? She braced herself against the door and leaned down to pick it up. It depended, she realized, on how long she had been unconscious since Hoth. Her last real meal had been during the morning of the battle, something that they claimed to be frozen bantha sausages. She looked at the nutrition paste and wished for the faux sausages. At least, she thought as she ate the paste, they had a taste.

The cell became her world over the next few days. The uniform durasteel-grey walls her only companions. The passage of time to her became the times that the same cup of paste was dropped into her cell and then taken away. Alexis lay on the cot, wondering if they intended to keep her there until she died. She moved her artificial leg up and down the cot's surface, the only feeling from it being the resistance she felt in her thigh.

The door opened and the original Imperial officer stood there. Alexis' muscles involuntarily contracted, fearing another round of interrogation. "Don't look so scared," the officer said. He gestured for her to stand up and leave the cell. "I don't know why he'd want to see Rebel scum like you, but the Admiral has some questions."

Alexis stood up from her cot, a tentative motion that did not go unnoticed by the guard. She slowly walked towards him and out the door. She straightened herself and tried to minimize the limp in her step. If she was going to be taken to an execution, she thought, she would show them how a Rebel died. She was led down the detention cell corridor and towards the interrogation room. No droid hovered nearby, she saw to some small piece of relief.

"Sit down," the guard said. Alexis went towards the chair nearest the door, but stopped when the guard barked an order. "Other side," he said. She walked around the table and pulled the chair back before sitting in it. The guard walked out of the room and the door slammed shut.

She sat there for what felt like hours, time crawling to a standstill in the maddening silence. She looked up to the corner of the room and watched the security camera. It stayed in its corner, electronic eye unblinking. Was this some sort of cruel game to them? she thought. Was she meant to stay in here for hours, waiting for someone to come that never would?

The door opened and an older Imperial officer wearing an Admiral's rank insignia entered the room, flanked by two stormtroopers. His thin face was wrinkled and the skin around his dark blue eyes were rimmed with crow's feet. His professionally styled light brown/dark blond hair was heavily streaked with gray. He looked at her, studying her face. He sat down in the chair opposite her, still watching her.

"Yes," he finally said. "I see it. You have his eyes and bit of his nose." She remained silent, her boredom and fear-dulled mind racing as to why this Admiral was looking at her and comparing her facial features to her father's. "Imagine my surprise when I see a familiar last name on the list of prisoners on my ships," he said. Alexis remained quiet.

"A lot of people in the galaxy have my last name," she finally said.

The Admiral chuckled slightly at that, the small bit of laughter ringing cold in the room. "Yes, it's not that uncommon, but hailing from Alderaan with a Coruscanti accent?" he said. His own Coruscanti accent was thick, thicker than even her father's which had long ago picked up traces of Alderaanian pronunciation. "Imagine my surprise," he continued, "to have my own granddaughter as a prisoner?"

The pieces fell together nearly instantly in Alexis' mind: why he knew what her father looked like and how to compare the two of them and why he wanted to see her personally. The stories that her father had told about him, though. He was a man single-minded to his own career, highly xenophobic and cruel to the clone soldiers that he commanded. A cold and unloving man that demanded nothing short of perfection from his crew and his own family. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?" she said.

"It can mean a lot, Alexis," he said. The use of her first name in such a familiar way felt odd and out of place. "It could mean your life."

"Then go ahead and kriffing kill me," she said, starting to push the chair away from the table. The stormtroopers guarding Admiral Lekine raised their blaster rifles.

"Sit down, there's no need for any of this," Lekine replied, motioning for her to stay seated. "I don't mean it in that way. The war's over for you, you know that. After this, you'll be taken to some penal colony and wait until the last bits of the Rebellion have been killed or captured and then Emperor Palpatine will decide what to do with you all." He stared into her eyes. "I doubt that by the time that happens that he'd be feeling merciful..." The way he said it sent a chill down her spine.

"And you're going to spare me this how?" she said.

"I have a small amount of political clout," he said, straightening his uniform as if to accentuate the point. "Enough to ensure you're put under a probationary house arrest until the war's over."

"And to do that," Alexis said, trying to make her voice have an edge of durasteel, "all I have to do is give you the rendezvous point?"

"Your rebel friends are more than likely long gone from there," Lekine said, "but there are still holdouts. Lord Vader is right now hunting for hideouts in the asteroid field. They'll be flushed eventually, and they'll race for cover. You know where that cover is."

"No," Alexis said.

A flash of disappointment made its way onto Lekine's face, fading into the controlled stoicism just a second later. "Your father, and I wish I could have raised him better, is twenty years late for his execution. You're young and you have the rest of a long life in front of you," he said. "Don't throw it away." He gestured down, below the table. "You tried to hide it on your way here," he said "That limp you have from your new leg. Just say 'yes' and I can make sure that you get a new one. State of the art with electric nerves and synthetic flesh that matches your skintone exactly. You can come with me to Imperial Center and meet with your grandmother, your uncle. A family that you never knew existed."

"You killed my grandparents at Alderaan," she spat out.

He cursed under his breath. "Tarkin," he said. "Tarkin was a blunt club and far too infatuated with the power that he had. What could have been accomplished with a volley of turbolaser power at the Alderaanian Palace he did with a superlaser against the entire planet. Your rebel friends gained far more supporters that day than were killed."

He stood up and approached a stormtrooper. "Get her a hoverchair, there's one final thing that she needs to see."

"I'll walk," Alexis said, standing up from the table. "And nothing you can show me can change my mind."

They walked from the detention cells to the nearest turbolift, a cramped fit for the four of them. "Your father signed his own death mark 20 years ago when he helped destroy something code-named the Sarlacc Project," Lekine said as the turbolift raced upwards. "It was an ambitious project led by an Admiral Gildar Varth; a Star Destroyer of immense size." He lead her through the officer's ready rooms before reaching his own. 'Your father and his cohorts managed to find the shipyards it was built at and then destroy it, a great victory for its time. You and your mother are quite proud of that, aren't you? It was one of the first blows struck against the Empire, unsung though it was." He lowered the dimness setting of the viewport, letting the light shine through. In the distance, near the asteroid shield was a Star Destroyer that Alexis had never seen before. Even though it was hundreds of kilometers away, it almost seemed to dwarf the ship she was on. Like the other Star Destroyers she had seen, it was wedge-shaped. Starting from the middle and continuing towards the massive engines, a superstructure the size of a city emerged.

"You see," Lekine said as she viewed the ship in terror, "your father's greatest accomplishment was merely a temporary setback for the Empire. We built it again, larger and more of them. There's nothing that the Rebels can destroy that we don't already have more of."

Alexis stared out of the viewport, watching the immense Star Destroyer. Such firepower, she thought, could wipe out a planet with no need for the Death Star's superlaser. No one stood a chance against its defenses, she thought. It was the ultimate terror weapon after the destruction of the Death Star, she thought. Yet the Death Star had been destroyed, she reminded herself. The Death Star was gone and so was a prototype version of the very ship that she saw before her. Someone would find some way to destroy it and its sisters. "Take me back to my cell," she finally said. She turned to look at Lekine. "And my father's going to enjoy meeting you again, if I don't beat him to it..."

Lekine's flustered look betrayed the stoicism he had shown. "Take her back to her cell," he cried out. "And arrange for her to be transported to a penal camp immediately!" The stormtroopers grabbed her roughly by the arms and dragged her back to the turbolift, the door out of the command salon closing with a harsh hiss.

 

I applaud Alexis' staunch courage and integrity in the face of interrogations and ... inducements of freedom and a famiy connection of sorts. She continues to believe in the Alliance's ultimate victory, too, I see. I hope we see more of her in future fic-projects.

 

I wanted her to still be courageous and a bit bold even after this experience, but not as recklessly so as she was before. I also wanted her to maintain that integrity even if presented with that extremely generous offer. Maybe she doesn't even believe him. To tell the truth, even I'm unsure if Admiral Lekine's offer was genuine or not. As for seeing her in future projects, that's entirely up to inspiration.

 

The reveal of Alexis's cybernetic leg was done well -- had me wincing in sympathy. And it makes her situation feel all the more desperate, knowing that's going to present an obstacle to future escape attempts. You managed to give it a nice feeling of realism, with her struggling to learn how to control it and still limping even after practice (though it's made rather clear that giving her a second-rate item was quite deliberate.) The mood of her imprisonment and interrogations is very effective -- just enough detail to convey the grimness of her circumstances without it feeling like the story is wallowing.

Then we have the unlovely Darth Granddaddy. Well, not literally a Sith -- but he sure seems on his way to the next best thing. Determined to sow doubt and use every last emotional need she might have against her. What a piece of work. And yet one can get the impression that it's not all entirely dishonest, that in his own self-centered way he'd really like to be on good terms with his granddaughter. But only on his terms and if she throws everything she believes in away for her own benefit. Nice. It's good to see that her sense of honor (and common sense, not taking his words for granted) pulls through in the end.

Of course, you did end on a little tiny cliffhanger... One does hope that there's a "to be continued", possibly with Alexis getting back to the Alliance? Please?

 

The struggling to learn how to use the prosthesis properly comes from decades old memories of my grandfather, who had his leg amputated. Obviously, the technology level is different, and it is sped up slightly for dramatic effect. I also wanted to give that desperation that you mentioned; it would be very difficult to escape from Imperial custody, especially alone, with that leg.

I personally debated on how far would be too far for the story, in regards to her interrogations and torture. So, I opted for the "nothing is scarier" approach. We have the interrogation droid come in and the door shutting behind it. We then cut to her several hours later, with a few side effects still lingering. Enough to get the reader's imagination going.

I like your interpretation of Lekine.

There's certainly a story to tell there, and I'm pretty sure that I will eventually tell it.

 

Wow.

This is really a powerful story. One bit that particularly stood out for me was the fact that the Bothan remains nameless. Alexis puts all this effort to save him, and she fails to save him, yet she doesn't even know his name. *shivers*

I love the description of the abandoned base on Hoth -- I've often toyed with the idea of writing something about it, but I was never able to capture the feel you gave it here.

And then, getting to the climax: Lekine! Argh! The man is so utterly repugnant, trying to bribe her, then to break her. I already read Empire Day, so I knew about his politics, but making him so disgusting was really a tour de force.

And now, rushing off to read the next instalment...

 

I wanted to convey that she feels somewhat responsible for his death. She was piloting the snowspeeder when it was shot down. I also think that Alexis would reason that the Bothan would rather die with an ally than to do so alone.

Most of the time that we've seen the abandoned Echo Base is years after the fact. I wanted to avert that and show it the very day after. Snow hasn't piled up against buildings, bodies are still laying where they fell and the smell of the freed tauntauns is still in their pen. Though, with the latter, I'd imagine that it'd still be there in 12-14 ABY...

Ah, yes. Lekine. I've actually done some thinking about his character in the 6-7 months since I wrote this. I was initially unsure whether or not Lekine had any real affection for his step-granddaughter. I've come to think that while his offer to have her under house arrest at the family's estate on Coruscant was genuine, any real warmth in that offer was completely feigned. He doesn't really think of her as a relative of his because of her father's actions.

Thanks for reading and reviewing!

 

Liked this a lot! Nice, short, interesting OC!

 

Sorry for not getting to this post sooner, but I really appreciate you reading and leaving a review, Renata. Thank you!

 

This was a really interesting story. It says a lot about Alexis that she was brave enough to volunteer to fly a snowspeeder against an Imperial invasion force when that's not even her trained specialty. Hoth was not for the faint of heart.

I also appreciated that she risked her life to try to save her injured gunner, even if she can't even remember his name. It shows that she goes to lengths to try to help others even if there's not already some important relationship between them.

If... If... If... That word haunted her, pulling at her with even more weight than the injured rebel that she was dragging.
I really liked this line!

That's got to be a creepy feeling to be moving through a deserted base that was normal and active and full of life a mere day before. I liked the ghostly "echoes" you pointed out like the landing gear indentations and taun-taun tracks.

I felt really bad for Alexis when she discovered she had lost her leg. As if everything else about her situation wasn't bad enough, she's got to deal with that too.

And then Lekine's appearance and offer really throw things into overdrive for her. When he started telling her that he'd wanted to kill his own son, her father, I figured she wouldn't really warm up to him, heh, but it was a tempting offer he gave her that would have made logical sense for survival, and I'm glad Alexis stuck to her guns and turned it down, despite what it could cost her in the long run.

Great story!

 

My take on Alexis at this point was that she was being overly brash and overconfident. She's the daughter of two rebels, on of whom already has some fame as part of the group that destroyed the Sarlacc Project back in the Dawn of Defiance RPG modules, so she's wanting to make her own name and goes the exact wrong way about it.

I've said it before, but it's because she feels responsible for his wounds. She volunteered while being in over her head, she wasn't able to evade the AT-ST's shots. This combines with the latter in your post to make certain that she wouldn't have left him in that speeder for anything.

It's at this point that she realizes that she's in way more trouble than she may even know. She doesn't know if there's still Imperials at Echo Base, or even if there's an Echo Base at all. The very fear of surviving the crash and making her way to potential safety only to be left on a desolate planet is very real to her, and that's what I was trying to accomplish with that line. I'm glad you liked it.

The "ghosts" of activity at the abandoned base was something that I've always wanted to see. Unlike Darksaber or Jedi Academy, where we return to the desolate base, the rebels were just there within the last 24 hours. The snow hasn't covered the tracks, the very stench of the tauntauns is still there in their stables.

It's all just one more thing that she has to deal with, in addition to being captured and tortured.

It's not really the best first impression! She's been told, constantly, about what kind of man her stepgrandfather is and now she's meeting him face to face, and realizing that fact for herself. It seems so easy, too. Give him coordinates to a rendezvous point that may have already been long abandoned, but she's still got her integrity.

Thanks for reading, Thumper!