Beyond - Legends Cold Winter (Fic-Gift for Rau_Fang) Winter, Tycho, Wedge.

This story is for my Fic-Gift Exchange. It is not the type of story I usually write, so I hope it isn't too disappointing. I prefer L/M romances. I'm also not too familiar with Wedge and Tycho, but I know a little about Winter from Scoundrels and a few other books.

I had to include the following elements:

I was writing for: Rau_Fang

Rau Fang wanted a story in Beyond with:

1. film noir (can be parody or homage)—(I had to Google that term. From what I gathered it meant those dark, gritty gangster or detective films).
2. A missed connection
3.Cliffhanger ending
4.And a metropolis

Rau Fang did not want: family or couple melodrama

Characters: Wedge, Tycho, Winter
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Winter Celchu pulled her knee-length overcoat tightly around her body to ward off the cold. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be cold on Coruscant’, she thought as she pulled her hood over her long white hair. The city-world’s Weather Control Network or WeatherNet as some people called it controlled the planet’s weather to maintain a comfortable temperature for humans and many other species year round. Unfortunately, the lower levels of the expansive metropolis planet never truly experienced the joys of climate-controlled weather. During the day when most people were active the underbelly of the city planet could get uncomfortably hot from trapped vehicle smog in addition to the combined body heat of trillions of sentients packed together shoulder-to-shoulder as they tried to live and work in horrific places like the Black Pit slums or the Dark Heart Ghetto.

Night was a different matter. Although night and day was almost nonexistent in this underworld most species tried to avoid any disruption of their body’s circadian rhythms by maintaining the same diurnal schedule as the residents living in the top levels of the massive city.

At night there was a dramatic drop in pedestrian traffic and in the worst areas, such as the Dark Pit slums, most people stayed inside their conapts to hide from the roving gangs of nocturnal teenage thugs. Speeders remained idle and the streets and walkways were nearly deserted—that's when the city cooled. It wasn’t enough to freeze anything, but the temperature differentiation between day and night was uncomfortable for most people.

Winter didn’t like the cold…ironic considering her name. She also didn’t enjoy the lower levels of Coruscant, the spider roaches or the nauseating smell of alien food and unwashed bodies that always permeated the slums. Unfortunately, her line of work often required her to travel to places others feared to tread.

She came to an intersection and waited. She was there to meet an undercover contact…a mole in an illegal slave trade ring that had been working on the lower levels for years. Children were being snatched from the streets and ferried off planet to various worlds to serve in whatever capacity their owners desired. She wasn’t sure how long the operation had been active. People disappear all the time from the slums—serial killers find victims, spice addicts kill and rob to feed their drug habit, or worse…there were rumors that monstrous Yuuzhan Vong creatures had survived the war and had taken a liking to human flesh.

She saw a large person amble out of the shadows and move towards her. She wasn’t sure if it was human or not. The bipedal sentient was wearing a cowled cloak draped over a bulky tunic and cargo trousers. The individual’s face was hidden by the cloak’s hood. The person had his head down looking at the ground and hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets. When he was a few meters away he looked up revealing the face of a heavily scarred Zabrak. His red eyes looked at her intently before he mustered a slight smile. “You have something for me?”

Winter reached into her pocket and touched the credit chip she was to give him in exchange for information. “Yes, do you have something for me?”

He held out a small memory stick. “I have the intelligence you requested. The names of the snatchers, holders and transporters and their locations.”

Winter nodded as she pulled out her credit chip and handed it over to the red skinned Zabrak as he passed her the information.

He gave her a curt nod and started walking away when he was thrown back by the impact of a blasterbolt to the head. Winter put up an arm trying to shield her face from the blood and brain matter splattered from the direct hit.

She stood stunned by the murder for a second or two before she pulled out her blaster and ran down the street away from the direction of the blaster fire. She initially assumed a slave-trader assassin murdered her contact, but a loud whooping war cry from what sounded like teenage human males told her another story. The shot came from gang members probably doing initiation killings. Hopefully tonight only one gang member was being Blood Affirmed, a euphemism to describe potential gang members murdering people to prove their mettle. If there was just one initiate the blood of the Zabrak would be enough, if not, Winter was probably next on their kill list and she doubted they would make it a clean kill…women always suffered first.

She rounded a corner and kept moving. She could hear the young men moving past the body of the Zabrak and continuing down the walkway. They were hunting her. She let out a string of epithets that would make her husband blush if he heard. She now wished she took up his offer to accompany her. Unfortunately her contact was very specific that she was to come alone. He threatened to call off the exchange if he saw she was tailed. Therefore she told Tycho to stay at Headquarters.

She ran down a short alley and tried to orientate herself. She had a holographic and autographic memory and memorized the map of this region, but she didn't anticipate how the Vong terraforming had altered the lower levels until they were almost unrecognizable. She realized a massive stretch of Vong vines and vegetation had blocked off the alternate route to her speeder, but she remembered there was a commuter hover train that would stop two blocks from her location in a few minutes. If she hurried she could catch it. She ran to the train station breathing hard from exertion as she mused that she was definitely getting too old for these types of adventures.

She ran onto the commuter platform right as the doors closed and the train pulled away. Winter cursed her bad luck. She turned around and realized she was trapped. The first hoodlum made it to the platform and stopped to give her a nasty grin. “Well, well we got a woman. This is my lucky day,” he said with a leer as his hand rubbed across the front of his trousers in an offensive sexual gesture.

Most women would be terrified, but Winter was not most women. She fought in the Rebellion and ran up against greater foes. Without hesitation she raised her blaster and fired putting a hole in the man’s offending crotch. His eyes went wide with shock as he looked down at his smoldering groin before his legs went out dropping him in a heap. As he lay whimpering on the cold permacrete walkway, five of his buddies showed up and began firing their blasters. Winter dove to the right and made it to a small retaining column that offered her some cover. This was bad, but she wasn’t going down without a fight. She looked around the duracrete column and returned fire. The men jumped left and right taking shelter behind a ticket counter and a large trash receptacle. She was holding her own fairly well until one of the men got a lucky shot. His blasterbolt hit the barrel of her weapon rendering it inoperative. She dropped the smoldering blaster with a shout of surprise.

Once the men realized they were not taking return fire they eased out of their positions and went to check on their fellow gang member. Upon seeing his massive wound they all gazed in her direction angrily. Winter considered running down the tracks, but the next commuter train would be arriving in fifteen minutes. It wasn’t enough time to sprint to the next platform five kilometers away. If Tycho was here he would say, ‘We're totally kriff’d.’

She closed her eyes realizing she might never see her husband again and that frightened her more than what these men might do to her. She snuck a glance and saw two of the brutes carefully approaching her with blasters drawn. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her only other weapon—a vibro-blade. ‘Never take a knife to a blaster fight,’ her husband would often say. In this case, she had no choice and little confidence of survival with five-to-one odds.

‘This can’t be the end,’ she thought despondently. Somehow, she always thought she would die in some ironically mundane and boring way, like slipping in the ‘fresher shower. She had survived so many missions, wars and conflicts that she assumed it wasn’t her fate to go out in a blaze of glory. No, she would die in a dull, commonplace home accident or perhaps passing away in her sleep.

‘I guess I was wrong,’ she mused miserably.

She heard footsteps moving towards her and then a loud report of a blaster. Her eyes closed expecting the impact and heat of a blasterbolt penetrating her body, but it never came. Instead she heard the confused and panicked screams of the men.

“Where is the blaster fire coming from?” one of the thugs screamed.

“I don’t know. It’s coming from nowhere and everywhere!”

Winter dropped low to the ground and chanced a look at the commotion. The men were scrambling trying to find cover as blaster shots tore through their limbs and clothing. She gazed at the area where the blaster fire was coming from, but she saw nothing but a durabrick wall…until she saw a shimmer of movement. It was as if the mortar lines of the bricks bent and shifted. She immediately understood somebody was there wearing a personal cloaking device.

She heard blaster fire coming from another direction and knew there were two people in cloaking devices shooting, moving and shooting again. They were probably wearing Stealth or mimetic suits with similar coverings to conceal their blasters.

She hunkered down hoping the next hover train would arrive early so she could escape this turf war. She wasn’t sure who was killing her stalkers. They could be rival gang members, slave traders, or possibly undercover members of the Galactic Alliance Guard. All she could do was wait and hope they were friendlies. Eventually the blasterfire ended. She could hear the soft moan of one man, followed by footsteps approaching.

“Winter? Are you all right?” came a very familiar voice.

“Tycho?” She came out from behind her protective column and looked for him. She saw nothing at first until he pulled off his stealth helmet and grinned at her, his blond head floating almost two meters above the floor.

“What are you doing here?”

The floating head frowned and turned to talk to seemingly empty space. “Do you hear that Wedge? No thank you for saving my hide, but a ‘what are you doing here, Tycho’.”

The air next to Tycho shimmered and suddenly she could see a man standing in a deactivated Stealth suit. He took off his helmet to reveal a grinning Wedge Antilles. “You’re in trouble now. You’re going to get a spanking when you get home.”

Tycho laughed. “I may like that.”

Winter glared at the two men with a shake of her head. “You two followed me.”

Tycho, still in an activated suit, gave a roll of his eyes. “Of course we followed you…at a distance. This is the Black Pit slums for Sith-sake.”

Winter wanted to be mad but she couldn’t. His over protectiveness saved her life. She smiled warmly and moved to kiss him but stopped. “Can you please deactivate the suit? I am not going to kiss a floating disembodied head.”

Tycho chuckled and turned the suit off materializing in whole. “How about now?”

“Much better.” She walked forward and gave the love of her life a long prolonged kiss. She then turned to Wedge. “Thanks for being his wingman.”

The darkhaired X-wing pilot gave her a warm smile. “That’s what friends are for.”

She reached out and took her husband’s gloved hand. “We need to get the information I have to headquarters.” She looked around at the dead and mortally wounded gang members. “I’ll call in an Air Ambulance."

They were moving in the direction of her speeder when they heard a horrific, inhuman shriek that vibrated the walls and echoed through the overbuilt and decaying under city.

“Oh no.” Tycho’s shoulders slumped. “That sounds like a Vong leviathan.”

The blood drained from Wedge’s face as Winter quickly picked up an operable blaster from one of the dead gang members.

The two men put their helmets back on and all three held up their blasters in a defensive position.

“Here we go again,” Tycho said softly.

“I’m getting to old for this,” Wedge whispered.

“When I get home I’m going to take a long hot bath,” Winter said absently, not once believing this is the way she would go out. She turned to the two men with a slight grin. “Well, what are we waiting for?”

 

Nice bit of suspensefulness ... I was on the edge of my seat there thinking Winter has really gotten into a fatal jam. So happy Tycho and Wedge followed her!! I laughed at the banter, perfect unwind to the tension earlier.

 

A great action packed story with the real touch of a film noir

 

OHMYLAND!!! Bravo! You took a very specific genre and made it work wonderfully! Great job!

 

That was great, J_L!

I could totally see this in gritty black and white film as I was reading it, yet it still maintained a SW feel. It was a lot of fun to read!

Great job!

 

Excellent! I give it Five Stars out of Five Stars!