Toryn sank back in her seat and let the triumph wash over her. She hadn’t faltered. Hadn’t tipped over the delicate balance of the base’s morale. She’d nailed the calculation, taken out a Destroyer, saved an entire GR-75 full of rebels.
And it hadn’t been enough. She could feel the victorious moment ebbing, ripped away from her shoreline by the gravitational pull of her dread. One transport wouldn’t save them. It wouldn’t sustain them. One transport wasn’t the answer to the question that had risen inside her, ravenous for an answer that wouldn’t come. Why are we fighting? it railed. There’s no hope left for the Rebellion. The Empire has whittled us away into nothing. Even if every blow we strike strikes true, even if every shot we fire hits its target, they’ll keep coming until we’re dust beneath their boots.
Toryn Farr set her jaw and inhaled deeply. There were too many people relying on her and her splintering foundations. All of them were doomed, but if that was the case, then the final thing she owed them was everything she had left. She’d throw herself into her command and hope that somewhere along the way, she’d figure out the reason that kept her fighting. “Settle down, people—we’ve got twenty-nine more transports to clear,” she called to her team.
This time it was undeniable: The tremor had crept into her voice.
* * *
—
Toryn had gotten a good rhythm going—one that the ceiling collapse ruined.
She rolled to her knees, her skin smarting from the sudden drop in temperature, and coughed against the acrid stench of the laser blast that had brought the ice down on top of them. Her brain grappled hopelessly with the fact that her station was gone. Even more hopelessly with the fact that she’d thrown herself clear in time.
Not everyone was as lucky.
“Sound off,” she choked, but all she got was confused groans and more crumbling from the hole that had been blasted in their ceiling. “Come on, who’s not dead?”
In the clearing dust, she spotted the hunched form of Corporal Sunsbringer slumped over her station. Toryn lurched to her feet and laid a hand on the younger woman’s snowsuit, relief coursing through her when her breathing hitched. Sunsbringer’s head rolled back, revealing a worrisome line of blood trailing down one cheek and an unfocused look in her eyes. “Co…mmander.”
“Shh,” Toryn said, tucking her junior’s flyaways back behind her ears. “You’re done. Get to the bay. Can you stand?”
Sunsbringer braced herself against her station, and Toryn’s gaze dropped to the controls beneath her hands. Against all odds, the thing was still operational.
So when Sunsbringer vacated her seat, Toryn took it.
Her junior hesitated, peering at her in a concussed daze. “Commander, we need to g—”
“You go,” she snapped, fingers already flying over the buttons and switches. This station wasn’t designed for the kind of work she needed to do, but she’d make it work or…well, die trying. “Now, Corporal.”
Sunsbringer still hesitated, even when another controller threw one of her arms over his shoulder and started drawing her through the minefield of rubble toward the command center’s door. She was a good kid. Deserved to make it out on a transport. And that meant Toryn had work to do.
But what could she do? The ion cannon had been taken out by the Imperial ground troops, the sensor array was in tatters, and the blockade had firmed up around Hoth. Sunsbringer’s station was set up for communicating with the hangars, not laying out the gauntlet of capital ships the remaining transports would have to get past. She was fumbling blindfolded through her duty with one hand tied behind her back.
Toryn glanced over her shoulder and found, to her shock, that she wasn’t the only one scrambling to salvage the machines. Trailed by her fussy protocol droid, Princess Leia was working her way down a bank of comm stations, dusting off the debris that had fallen onto them and checking to see if they were operational. Toryn bit back a laugh when the princess reeled back and kicked one in frustration.
“Shouldn’t you be evacuated already?” she called.
Leia’s head snapped up. “Shouldn’t you?” she replied, but there was a wry archness to it. When their eyes locked, Toryn felt their sameness click into place. Both of them had handed over their lives to this Rebellion young. Neither of them would give up the fight now.
All that remained was to give all that remained.
“There are five transports left to clear,” Toryn said, turning back to her station and slipping a headset over her ears. “Let’s give them the best shot we can.”
She knew there was no going back to the rhythm of before. Her resources had been cut out from under her, and every minute that ticked by saw another sensor knocked from her array by a shot from one of the Imperial walkers thundering closer and closer. Her voice was scraped raw with dust and ash. The chatter in the headset had gone from the calm, firm order of the Rebellion holding its ground to the scattered chaos of retreat.
But she tried—for the freedom of the galaxy, for Samoc in her snowspeeder somewhere over the ice fields, for whatever damn reason she could muster that would keep her from hyperventilating in her chair, Toryn Farr kept her post.
Until Captain Solo’s voice tore through her concentration. “You all right?” the smuggler shouted, picking clumsily through the rubble.
“Why are you still here?” Leia fired back from over Toryn’s shoulder.
“I heard the command center had been hit.”
“You got your clearance to leave,” the princess snapped. Solo’s distracting presence used to be a welcome one in this room, but Toryn shared Leia’s irritation now. The captain should have been long gone.
The fact that he wasn’t was…well, maybe some bets were getting won today.
“Don’t worry, I’ll leave. First I’m going to get you to your ship.”
C-3PO pounced on the opportunity to get more nagging in. “Your Highness, we must take this last transport. It’s our only hope.”
Leia let out a hiss. Toryn kept up her frantic flipping of switches as the princess staggered to the other side of the center, where Commander Chiffonage was using the only other operational comm station to coordinate what was left of the ground defenses. “Send all troops in Sector Twelve to the south slope to protect the fight—”
The devastating thunder of a blast tore away Leia’s voice. Toryn bent low over her station, covering her head against the rain of new debris. With her cheek pressed against the buttons, she felt like an animal pinned in a snare, kicking frantically to get free.
“Imperial troops have entered the base. Imperial troops have entered the base.”
Solo stepped up to the princess’s side, catching her arm with far too much gentleness for the middle of a war zone. “Come on, that’s it,” he murmured.
Toryn felt the pause in her bones. The moment the princess weighed everything they could still do against how much it would buy them. It was the calculation Toryn had been ignoring ever since the roof collapsed, and when at last Leia turned to Chiffonage and declared, “Give the evacuation code signal,” she felt as if all the air had been let out of her.
“And get to your transports!” Leia shouted as Solo all but dragged her from the room.
The first, wholly irrational thought that crossed Toryn’s mind was that Corporal Sunsbringer would kill to have seen that interaction.
The second, far-too-rational thought that chased it was that she’d just have to get out and tell the kid herself.
Toryn had all but expected to die with her headset on. It felt like throwing off the burden of an entire moon to slip it from her ears. She rose on unsteady legs, aches throughout her body barking reminders of all the places she’d hit the ground when she’d dived clear of the ceiling collapse. There was one last transport staging for evac.
Toryn Farr ran for it.
She to
re through the crumbling remains of Echo Base like a wind across the ice flats, carried not by faith or love or conviction but by a scrap of barracks gossip—and damnit, that was enough. The Rebellion was filled with grand ideals, but a person’s mind wasn’t built to hold on to something so enormous when everything was crumbling around them. All Toryn could do—all she needed to do—was let the small things carry her convictions in a relay through the moments when it all grew too big to grapple with. When she skidded out of the tunnels and into the hangar, she swore the armored shell of the GR-75 was the most beautiful sight Hoth had to offer.
That was, until she spotted a familiar scrap of Chandrilan luck-cloth wound around the arm of a flight suit in the knot of injured pilots waiting to be loaded onto the transport.
Her muscles could argue later—Toryn broke into a sprint, sliding to her knees next to the stretcher. Samoc grinned up at her from beneath a worrisome burn that had already been slathered in bacta. “Rogue Six, reporting for duty,” her sister croaked. “Orders, Echo Base?”
Toryn threw her arms around Samoc and knew she’d found the next thing to keep her going. “Let’s get the hell off this rock.” She sat back and glanced up at the GR-75, her eyes catching on the letters etched across its hull.
With a rueful shake of her head and a thin smile, Toryn Farr prepared to board the Bright Hope.
A GOOD KISS
C. B. Lee
Chase Wilsorr tugs on his clothes over his thermal layers, shivering in the cold morning air. Not that he can tell it’s morning aside from the 0400 blinking at him from his datapad. The barracks are dark aside from the soft glow of the screen, and he’s the only one unfortunately awake at this hour.
He claps his hands to his face, trying to slap some life into himself, and jumps up and down in place. It’s a new day. Anything is possible. Today could be his last day on kitchen duty, he knows it.
“I am confident. I am strong. I’m a valuable member of the Rebel Alliance, and any minute now Major Derlin is going to give me a mission of my own.”
Chase swipes through the pages he was reading before he went to bed, mouthing Raysi Anib’s words to himself.
To first make your dreams come true, you must be open to the belief that they can. You must embody it. If you don’t believe it to be true, how can anyone else?
The winning smile of the author grins at him from the cover of Be Your Best Self on his datapad. The Mirialan genius got him this far. Without this book he never would have left Takodana for Yavin 4 in the first place to fulfill his dreams about being a hero for the Rebel Alliance, so he owes it to Anib to keep trying.
“It’s too early for your self-help shenanigans,” mumbles a sleepy voice from the top bunk. “I don’t have to report to the bridge until oh-nine-hundred. Please let me sleep.”
The naysayers will try to get you to doubt yourself.
Chase ignores Joenn’s critical voice and the way the cold seems to seep through his socks as he tugs on his boots and pads to the shared bathroom. “I am a strong, capable person with value,” he intones to himself in the mirror.
“Shut up, kitchen boy. Hurry up and get out of here, I’m gonna want breakfast,” Poras calls from a few bunks down.
His smile falters at the “kitchen boy” comment. The reality of who he is and what he does sinks in with absolute disappointment. Chase looks unacceptably plain, with boring written all over his features, nothing at all like the heroes whom epic spy stories and romances are written about.
Imagine who you want to be. Use that energy to direct your actions.
Chase gives his reflection a roguish wink, trying to project the aura of a confident, dashing hero.
Instead, he just looks like he has something in his eye.
A new notification flashes across the datapad, and Chase opens it eagerly.
To: Chase Wilsorr,
I have reviewed your appeal regarding Major Derlin’s denial of your request for sentry duty at Echo Station 3-T-8. As per Major Monnon’s report of your subpar work in the Alliance Corps of Engineers and his recommendation you be removed from duty, I regret to inform you that you do not meet the qualifications and encourage you to continue with your training before you take on advanced duties. Please report to Lieutenant Harlize Dana in the kitchens as per usual.
Your continued contributions and your commitment to the Rebel Alliance are appreciated.
General Carlist Rieekan
Ugh.
Chase hates Hoth. He hates Echo Base, he hates the freezing cold, how cramped the bunks are, how the gray-white sky melts into the endless ice fields outside, and most of all, he hates how it feels like LOSER has just been stamped across his forehead and there’s no way to get rid of it.
It was so different on Yavin 4. Even though he’d failed basic training six times, Chase still felt hopeful. The days spent with the other young rebels, listening to stories of dashing spywork and bravery, imagining himself fighting back against the Empire. Running through the training fields, lush green fronds swaying in the humid jungle air—Yavin had felt like a wild adventure, and even working in the kitchens had been fun, cooking spicy woolamander stew and learning about different foods from Reynolds’s and Khan’s home planets, laughing about how they’d be heroes.
Kitchen duty on Hoth is always the same; there’s little variation in the menu, nothing but the endless monotony of peeling and dicing in the same four walls. Chase has long since memorized the line of every pipe across the ceiling, the sound of every creak and sizzle from the power lines ahead, even the way the ice is curved under from where he sits everyday, a slight dip from where it melts and refreezes to his trousers.
Chase peels another purple tuber and tosses it into the pile.
X0-R3 beeps affirmatively at him, taking the completed pile and dicing it efficiently.
“You don’t even need me,” he says morosely to the droid. “This could all be automated.”
Harlize ruffles his hair. “You’re important, Chase, we all are.” She sweeps her long blue hair into an efficient bun, tucking it into her hat before joining Chase at the pile of tubers. “C’mon, completely staffing the kitchens with droids is a luxury we can’t afford. You’re quick with a peeler and a kriffing good supply runner. Not all of us are cut out to be pilots. Doesn’t mean we aren’t valuable.”
“Caf. Delivery. Datawork.” Chase groans. “Some hero I am.”
His old friends had both completed training on Yavin with flying colors; Marinna Reynolds just started flying with the Rogue Squadron, and Oriss Khan trains regularly with Alliance Special Forces when he isn’t taking on grueling shifts of sentry duty.
Chase, meanwhile, is still stuck doing kitchen work.
He peels another tuber and starts a new pile.
* * *
—
Chase’s first kitchen duty is over by 0700, and then he’s on call for “essential delivery,” which makes his job sound way more important than it actually is. He delivers caf and food to people who can’t leave their shift, runs whatever boxes or supplies people need, and occasionally relays messages.
Chase knows all of these tunnels by heart—in fact, he helped make a good portion of them, before Major Monnon booted him out of the corps. Chase wasn’t cut out to be an engineer, but he wanted to help, despite Monnon’s claims that he was a danger to himself and others with the heat-tech. He shudders, thinking of that first week on Hoth when they’d carved out and melted tunnel after tunnel. Sure, he kept dropping the tools and he did sprain his ankle, but the ice flooring had been uneven! And using the heat-tech was far slower than Shara Bey’s idea to use the ion cannons of the A-wings. It’s not Chase’s fault he didn’t know what setting to use, but they ended up with a nice big briefing room, which worked out for the best, even though Major Monnon finally snapped at him to go help with the setup of the barracks instead of making
the tunnels.
Chase still uses the makeshift tunnels they’d built during construction scattered above and below the main access tunnels. Most people don’t know about them or avoid them, preferring the wider corridors that connect the main areas of the base, but Chase likes his shortcuts, likes how surprised people are when he seems to pop out of nowhere.
He saves his favorite caf run for last, before he has to head back to the kitchens for his second shift.
The bustle of mechanics and pilots and the hum of speeders and X-wings gives way to the soft bleating of the furry beasts as Chase approaches the tauntaun pens. There aren’t enough tauntaun handlers for adequate rotation to allow for both sleep and the mess hall, so the food runs are necessary to keep the handlers going. On today’s early shift, three handlers are on duty, a fact that Chase definitely did not factor into his schedule.
Baesoon and Murell take the caf and food gratefully as Chase makes his way through the ice-formed stables, the floor littered with tauntaun droppings still being swept up for compost.
Jordan Smythe, the newest handler, spots him walking down the aisle between the pens, his face breaking into a wide grin. “You’re the best, Chase.”
“Just doing my job,” Chase says. “Apparently I’m not good enough to do anything else.”
“Oh, come on, you’re the best runner in Echo Base.” Jordan smiles at him, taking the cup of freshly poured caf Chase had specially prepared just a moment before.
Chase blinks, distracted by the brief warmth of Jordan’s fingers brushing against his. “You’re just saying that,” he says, embarrassed. He pulls his hand back, sticking it in his pocket hastily. Was that too fast? Jordan didn’t notice, right?
Jordan takes another sip of caf before setting down the cup on top of the gate of Sunshine’s pen.
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