7: Gathering the Pieces
HOTH
The art of stealth had two major components: physical dexterity, and awareness of your environment. After twelve hours of slow and laborious travel, Ageless Void had circled around Echo Base, moving in a low crouch at times, lying down at others, and allowing the snow to cover him before he scout-crawled behind a row of rocks, then jogging for the better part of a kilometer before he dropped to his stomach, inch-working up the side of an outcropping, where he performed a push-up and slinked high into the rocky peaks. He had to keep solid rock walls between him and the probe droid for as long as possible—that would hide his heat signature.
And staying downwind could help him avoid more encounters with predators.
Even so, the Viper has probably detected some of my biologic algorithms already. Vipers were notoriously sensitive, but they could be tricked. For instance, a pair of Rebels on Hoth had apparently taken out one of the probe droids that had detected them, so it could be done.
Movement across ice and rock was always noisy, though. As was his clothing. But the clothing had other uses besides keeping him warm. Whenever he had to drop down a level on the rocks, Ageless first removed his jacket and tossed it down to the ground he was going to land, so that it would help muffle the sound of his landing. Every little bit helps.
He peeked over ridges, slinked from boulder to boulder, over to a snow dune, making sure that he only left footprints behind large hills, moving in a wide arc to where he estimated the Viper droid would be. The snow wasn’t heavy but it was constant, always in his eyes, freezing in his bristling three-day stubble. His breath came out in great clouds and his lungs burned from the cold. His joints seized up at times. Every step ached, every movement took an effort.
You will not beat me. His enemy was Hoth, and he was determined to overcome it.
When he had to climb, the jagged rocks bit into his stiff and frozen hands. Hoth had a will of its own, it denied him, it mocked him. Ageless hated it. He hated Hoth as a person, not a thing, and he set his will against it, gritting his teeth and growling as he climbed.
His energy low, he ate the single ration bar he had found inside the locker at the base. It was going to have to last him.
It was almost morning by the time he spotted it. A small black dot moving slowly along the white blanket of snow on the other side of the hill, and about a hundred meters below him. The moonfrosted ground made the shape so obvious—Birilla was bright tonight.
Ageless had to be careful. Vipers were known to have self-destruct mechanisms, and he needed this thing in one piece if he was going to get optimal use from its transmitters.
But how do I get to it without it noticing me first?
Then the obvious answer arrived.
I don’t go to it. I bring it to me.
His stomach growled again. It had been doing that for several hours. Ageless needed food, real food, and he needed it soon. But Zabraks were hardy people, and he had been trained to dig deep whenever necessary. The opposition must not win, he told himself. So, he climbed back down the hill a ways, and began working something out. He looked at the hill’s peak, then at the jagged outcroppings all around him. It only took a moment to gauge the geometry of the landscape and work out ambush points.
Ageless had been thinking about this. The Viper’s audio sensors would allow it to judge the distance of something by the sound it made. The louder the noise, the more exact its triangulation and echo-location sensors could pinpoint a source.
So, he climbed twenty meters down the hill, using the boulders and shadows as his confederates, pointed the A180 at the icy ground, and fired. The blaster shot echoed all around, and Ageless let out a roar of someone injured. Then he bolted up the hill, leaping over small boulders, slipping only once, and then dipped behind a lone column of ice and got in a crouch. As badly as his body wanted to pant, he held his breath. Any expulsion of air might alert the Viper’s atmospheric sensor or its organic-algorithm-seeking programs.
After a few seconds, he heard the familiar hum of a repulsorlift drive unit. It was quiet, but not silent. He heard it approaching, and hoped the wind was enough to mask his light footsteps as he moved around the column of ice. He listened intently, hearing the Viper gliding past him, itself supremely unconcerned with the difficult terrain.
Ageless closed his eyes, and sent up a silent prayer to whatever gods might be listening that Corporal Jemmis had not lied to him. Years ago, when he had been a darktrooper, a stormtrooper named Adlan Jemmis had been trying to repair a Viper probe droid. The two of them had been up all night, unable to sleep after an operation had gone horribly wrong, partially because the Viper had malfunctioned. Ageless and Jemmis had swapped stories of home and girlfriends for hours, and during that time, Jemmis had mentioned a weakness that had always been in the Vipers.
“The conveyance wires here,” Jemmis had said, pointing just above the data-storage box. “It’s a weak design. Basically, if anything hits it directly, it shatters, and it can stall a Viper for several minutes before the droid can reroute power and activate again. During that time, the Viper must choose between self-detonation and transmitting the data it’s found—it will always choose to send the data, of course, but the detonation is supposed to happen a half second afterwards. With the conveyance wires severed, the delay between transmission and self-destruct is much longer.”
How much longer? That’s what Ageless Void wished he could go back in time and ask. But would it really matter? Without a means to broadcast his position to someone who cared, he was dead anyway.
Force be with me, he thought, listening to that steady hum.
When Ageless judged the Viper had gone by, he stepped out from the giant ice block and took aim. Right above its repulsorlift drive was its thrust port, and right above that was both its data-storage box and its detonator box. Ageless knew his aim had to be just right.
He fired.
One thing Ageless had never lacked for was aim, especially when he had a clear target dead in his sights and a full second to exhale and focus. The bolt hit exactly where he wanted it to, and the Viper stalled halfway down the slope. From ten meters away it spun and brought its blasters to bear on him. Ageless ducked for cover, cursing Corporal Jemmis for all he was worth.
And then…silence.
He peeked his head around the ice column and saw that the Viper had gone still, and was just floating there, blaster barrel extended and dormant.
Without wasting time, he scrambled out of hiding and got to work. The plasma torch on the multi-tool made short work of the rear paneling on the droid’s carapace, giving him instant access to the main servo and actuator brain. With hands shaking from both cold and hunger, Ageless fumbled with the duffel bag and practically ripped the slicer rig out of it. He extended the three main plug-ins and connected them to the droid’s maintenance jack. The rig slipped from his hands. He cursed. The wind howled and bit into his cheeks and eyes and gums as he recovered the rig.
He blew into his fingers. “Come on,” he muttered over and over. “Come on, come on, come on…”
At any moment the self-destruct could go off. At this close, it would kill him.
Don’t focus on that. Keep your head. Stay in the moment. Key words from his instructors at the Nest.
His fingers moved in jitters across the slicer rig’s keypad, accessing the droid’s base code. He saw all sorts of errors. The Viper was trying to perform its last function—send its last recorded data and then destroy itself. It couldn’t do it at the moment, but it was never going to give up, and eventually it would win.
The wind roared in his ears. Ageless thought he heard something else. A creature’s growl. Footsteps over stone. He looked around. Ignored it. Went back to the keys.
Cannibalizing droids for parts was a big point of training in the Nest. Ageless had had to know the finer points of coding architecture, as well as mechanical engineering. It was as important as learning how to strip a blaster and clean its components and reassemble them. The socketguards on military droids were always tricky, they had the new SoroSuub XT idents with modulator fulcrums that could have a slicer’s head going in circles, chasing its own tail. “The answer is t-code threading,” his old instructor told him, “which reworks the compound coding escalator module to act like a decoding prospector program.” Thank the Force he still remembered that. He had done it a thousand times in training and a couple dozen times in the field—but never this cold, never this hungry, never this desperate.
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The Viper’s long manipulator arms occasionally reached out to him, as if to stop him. Or maybe to beseech him.
It might have been a minute, it might have been ten. He honestly didn’t know. But at last he accessed the droid’s brain fully and performed a memory wipe, which, if done right, could trick it to returning to factory settings, completely nullifying any attempt to destroy itself.
When he saw the droid sag, and heard its repulsorlift drive power down, Ageless finally staggered backward against a rock and breathed the largest sigh of relief of his life. The Viper slumped on the ground, like a dead Mon Cala octo-fish.
After giving himself just a few seconds of rest, Ageless knelt beside the probe droid, took the multi-tool out again, and carefully started cutting around the droid’s huge dome. Inside was his ticket, his key to salvation, a transceiver deck that could call for help. If the probe droid was here, it was surely broadcasting to someone. Someone Imperial. All he had to do now was try and use it to relay the message that he was an IIS operative and that he was stranded. Surely help would come.
And then Zumter will pay.
For the first time since he awoke in Echo Base, Ageless thought things were looking up. At no point did he consider that Zumter had had orders to do what he’d done. At no point did he believe the Empire had marked him for death.
* * *
He now had a transceiver deck, and all it needed was power. Unfortunately, destroying the Viper’s conveyance wires and then resetting its whole brain meant it could not be used, at least not without extensive repair and parts he did not have. But he had one other resource that could help. Several of them, actually. There were at least a dozen droids back at Echo Base, and at least one GNK “Gonk” power droid, which he vaguely recalled seeing when R-3PO had dragged him from the ice. Gonks were essentially just walking power generators with bare minimum AI. Their whole purpose was to bring power to places that had little to no power grid, places like Tatooine or Dathomir or Ossus. That should be plenty power to juice this thing up and call somebody.
The sun was rising, giving him a better look at the world around him. The snow had stopped, and the winds had calmed down. Hoth still fought him, though. The temperature was still at killing levels, and if he did not make it back inside soon his clothes were not going to save him. He already feared frostbite in his toes, which had gotten wet in all the crawling around.
The hike back to Echo Base was much easier than the slow stealthy crawl away from it. He moved on a direct path, feeling in good spirits. His spirits were even higher when he came across a smashed T-47 snowspeeder. The thing looked like it had taken a hard hit and crashed into the ice. The canopy appeared to be crushed, probably under the foot of an AT-AT. The pilot had gotten out, but the gunner in back had not been so lucky. The pale, ice-covered corpse was that of a Human, and it looked like he’d taken a direct hit before the AT-AT stomped him.
“Too bad for you, friend,” Ageless said. His breath came out in a larger cloud. Seemed like the temperature was dropping precipitously again. His knuckles ached a bit. “But lucky for me.” He rooted around inside the smashed cockpit and found a comms box. Many of its circuits were fried, but there was enough there to cannibalize and use to tweak the Viper’s transceiver deck. His multi-tool made quick work out of the pilot’s console. He got what he needed and left.
He took one last look at the gunner, frozen with his eyes partially open, as if still looking for his next target. Ageless imagined the snow would soon cover him, and the Rebel would be entombed in ice forever.
He continued his trek back to the base, feeling like the Force was smiling down on him.
Things are looking up.
But his good spirits were suddenly doused when, not too far from the crashed T-47, he came upon a large gash in the ice. It went west to east, looking like the wound left by some giant dragging an axe behind it. It was ten meters wide and stretched for about twenty meters. As he followed it, Ageless became aware he was not walking on snow, but on a partially snow-covered parachute.
He immediately had his suspicions.
The crater was not one of deep impact, merely where the ship’s own heat had melted the ice and partially sunk itself deeper. He crept up to it, blaster at low-ready position, and peeked inside the open canopy. The cockpit, if it could be called that, was only big enough for one occupant. There were no controls for true piloting, only minor course corrections.
An insertion pod.
The Empire had these, but they were of a different design—this one was oval, whereas Imperial insertion pods were usually spherical. He looked around at the ablative heat tiles that had fallen off in charred pieces, nudged small debris with his toe, wiped caked snow away from some of its instruments to get a better look.
That was when he saw the shape of the seat, as well as the seatbelt. He had seen that exact same seat on Corellian bulk cruisers. So then this was a patchwork job, something built by private entities. Rebels. He spun around, looking for footprints, but if there had been any, they were already covered up by the snow.
The next logical question leapt to mind. But what are they coming back here for? Something they forgot? What was so important to spend money on this rig and then send in a single asset?
Then something else struck him. Whoever they are, they wouldn’t come here with no way out. Which means they can communicate.
And that meant that the insertion pod had a transmitter of its own.
Feeling hope rekindled and a vicious elation at the idea of getting the chance to wrap his hands around Zumter’s neck, Ageless Void searched the cockpit’s main console, and found the transmitter hub for the beacon. He smiled. The multi-tool was already back in his hand and he cut off the paneling and had access to the transmitter’s innards. Using the parts of the T-47’s comm box he’d just cannibalized, he was able to patch in to the beacon’s powerbox.
I’ll bet the Rebels use similar code in both their T-47s and their insertion pods. The handshake protocols between the hardware ought to go fast.
And it did. The slicer rig connected easily to the maintenance jackport and instantly overrode the encryption. He didn’t have to worry about that part. Then he pulled out the Viper’s transceiver deck and plugged it into the slicer rig, as well. It took ten minutes, all the while his extremities were getting colder, more numb.
The opposition will not win. The mantra kept him going when any reasonable mind would run back inside Echo Base and make themselves a fire.
There was a minor hiccup with the Imperial and Rebel transmitters understanding each other—they both had varying, and sometimes opposing, code brands. This took a bit of time, all the while his body heat dropped because he was no longer moving. Once he had forced the transmitters through their own handshake protocols, though, a screen popped up on the slicer rig that showed him an array of radio channels currently being used in the area. He smiled. The crazy zigzagging lines took a moment to interpret, but after he had distinguished the different radio emissions from the remaining Viper droids on the planet, he separated them from what must be the lone Rebel operator that came to Hoth in the pod.
He patched in, heard nothing but white noise for several seconds, then a scratchy voice. He fiddled with the settings, narrowed the bandwidth search, and eventually got the Rebel transmitter to think his Viper transmitter was a verified receiver—it would now share all its communications with Ageless’s transceiver deck.
He only needed a speaker now, so he patched the Viper’s transceiver deck into the pod’s speakers. A second later he heard a woman’s voice say, “—confirmed for that, Mordenta. You are go for breach. Keep your commlink on so that we can hear anything you hear.”
“Copy that, Actual,” another woman’s voice said. Sounded like she was panting, jogging. “I am thirty seconds from breaching the base. Stand by.”
“Copy, Mordenta.” Then the voice started to say something, and cut itself off quickly. Ageless heard the shuffling of hands across keyboards, and excited voices talking in the background. “Mordenta, uh…hang on. We’ve got more intel on Horizon Lost.”
That startled him. Horizon Lost? Had he heard that right? That was the codename of another Nest operative. A Human from Corellia. He had known the guy through training—Horizon Lost had been a member of the Nest’s second class. That’s not what she said. That can’t be what she said. How can she know the codename of a Nest operative?
All around him the wind was picking up and his body was screaming at him to get inside, get warm, but he had to hear more.
“Say again, Actual,” said Mordenta. “You say you’ve got a lead on Horizon?”
“That we do. Stand by.” An excruciatingly long minute went by, and the woman from Actual finally said, “All right, Mordenta, here’s the latest. We are pretty sure Horizon Lost has arrived on the Asserter and is likely being prepped to head down to the surface. You need to reach Ageless Void before he does.”
Ageless felt a flood of relief. The Kingdom is sending someone to get me. They must have discovered what Zumter did and arrested him, and they’ve got Horizon coming to pluck me off this iceball. He sighed a cloud of chilled breath. “I’m okay,” he said aloud. “They’re coming for me. They’re coming to rescue me.”
“Copy that,” Mordenta said. “How much time do I have?”
“Maybe an hour?” Actual replied. “You need to perform a full sweep of the site by then. Be careful. Bring Ageless in alive if you can, but if he tries anything…you know what to do.”
“Copy, Actual.”
We’ll see about that, Rebel, he thought, smiling inwardly at the thought of getting the drop on her. We’ll just see. Maybe I’ll have time to bag you up before Horizon gets here. Or maybe I should wait and we’ll take you down together—
“If you see Ageless, try not to approach him until you’ve offered him a chance to come in. Make sure he understands we’re his only method of survival. And if you see any sign of a soldier in full tactical kit, it will certainly be Horizon Lost. Make sure you take him out before he takes Ageless out. Understand? Ageless must be kept alive, he is too precious a resource. So if you see Horizon first, abandon your search for Ageless and take out Horizon. That is your priority.”
“Understood, Actual. Breaching in ten seconds.”
Wait a minute. What?
Ageless looked down at the transmitter as if it had somehow lied to him or produced the wrong words. Before he takes Ageless out? That was what the woman from Actual had said. But that didn’t scan with him. None of it did. Horizon was on his way and this Rebel Mordenta was already here, but the latter was talking about saving him before the former could kill him.
I must have heard that wrong. I must have.
“Uh, Mordenta, switch to secondary channel,” said Actual. “We’re getting a funny reading here on our receiver. Maybe someone’s patched into our comms, maybe not. Could be an atmospheric problem. Just in case, let’s switch over.”
“Copy, Actual. Switching to secondary.”
With that, the channel went dead. He could probably spend another few minutes locating their new frequency, but why bother? He couldn’t stay out here much longer or he would freeze, and he already had all that he needed. Ageless didn’t want to believe it, but it all fit now. Like tumbles in a lock, it all fell into place, and he realized he could open the door. The door that he had been unconsciously keeping closed this entire time, behind which lay the truth.
The truth of why Zumter had done this to him.