Disclaimer:
I do not own Star Wars Rebels, its characters, or its expanded universe. They belong to George Lucas, Lucasfilms, and Disney XD.
Summary:
A damaged engine forces the crew of the Ghost to crash land on a hostile planet. Lost and alone, short on supplies, hounded by deadly animals and a frigid environment, can they truly hope to survive with no one to rely on but one another? They might need more than the Force to save them this time. Rated PG-13 for action violence and some romance. Takes place sometime after 'Gathering Forces,' but before 'Path of the Jedi.'
"The Crystal is the Heart of the Blade."
In an instant, it all fell apart.
One second they'd been dodging Tie Fighter fire like it was just another day in the life of a Rebel. Intercepting Imperial convoys, smashing up some storm troopers, appropriating some much needed cargo and being on their merry way. The mission hadn't gone smoothly as they liked but they had got it done in the end, and they'd been preparing to enter hyperspace and let the Empire eat their space dust.
Then one stray blast had caught their port engine.
Normally, a ship damaged thusly had built-in safety features to prevent it entering hyperspace in such a damaged state. But the timing of the shot could not have been more horrible had the pilot of the Tie Fighter planned it. It struck their engine at the exact moment their hyperdrive engaged, sending the Ghost hurtling out of control through the glowing tunnel of hyperspace.
Inertial dampeners tried and failed to compensate for the wildly fluctuating trajectory, as everyone was flung against a nearby surface hard, scrambling against walls and along the floor in a vain attempt to hold on to something. Hera slammed a hand down sharply on the emergency stop, cutting power to the engines, and the Ghost was flung out of hyperdrive and back into normal space, still tumbling wildly out of control.
"Hera, what the hell?!" shouted Kanan as he tumbled into the cockpit. His padawan stumbled in close behind him.
"Working on it!" their pilot spat back, struggling vainly with the controls. Alas, no matter how hard she pulled on the wheel, the Ghost continued to spiral out of control. "I've got no control, and sensors are out! We're flying blind!"
"Everybody brace for impact!" Kanan yelled over the intercom, buckling himself in next to Hera. He punched in instructions to the on-board computer, trying to bring back up their sensors to ensure they weren't heading towards anything big.
"Trouble!" shouted Ezra, pointing out the viewscreen. Kanan and Hera saw it too. Though the image was moving in and out thanks to their wildly spinning vessel the great glare of white was only getting bigger. They were heading right towards a planet.
"I've got an idea!" Hera exclaimed, flipping switches as she issued out commands. "Zeb! Anything that isn't nailed down, pushing up against the starboard side. We need to shift the ballast. Chopper, Ezra, give him a hand!"
"Chopper's down!" Ezra reported, even as he scrambled down one of the corridors to the cargo hold. "He might be broken!"
"We'll fix him up later!" Kanan replied. Almost immediately, there came a horrible wrenching sound, and something metallic flitted past the viewscreen. "If there is a latter," he muttered.
"She'll hold," insisted Hera, gripping the wheel so tight her hands were starting to go numb. "She'll hold."
Normally, the cargo bay of the Ghost was more uncomfortably empty than the crew tended to appreciate. The stray crate of food supplies, or the occasional canister of oxygen, the littered stray parts of one of Sabine's newest bombs were about all that cluttered the floor. Today, however, they were almost stocked to the gills by a number of heavy metal containers. Each held a newly manufactured heating unit, designed to be installed on a vessel or a home and keep it warm throughout even the harshest of winters.
They'd just been 'borrowed' from an Imperial Convoy, and were on their way to Dantooine to drop them off, since the people there were in sore need of such for a coming blizzard season. Right now, however, they were being shoved up against the walls on Hera's command to create ballast by Zeb and Ezra. Sabine helped with the lighter stuff, but whenever the mag-lift was engaged the crate in question would be much more difficult to control due to the constantly shifting inertia. And light or heavy, the crates were still solidly built. One wrong move could flatten a foot or hand.
Finally, however, they'd gotten everything they could stacked up on the starboard side of the ship, as instructed. Garazeb Orrelios, better known by his crewmates as just Zeb, tapped the panel by the speaker to relay the information to their pilot.
"Everything's in place Hera, now can we please stop spinning?!" he pleaded into the intercom.
"Sure thing," Hera replied. "Just lean up against the starboard side. Now."
He raised a furry brow, even as Sabine and Ezra followed the order immediately. "Why? What're you gonna-?"
And then his feet were wrenched out from underneath him as his body slammed into the far wall.
While not personally witnessing the display, the grunts and slams heard over the intercom had left Hera with a fairly clear mental image of what had just happened. She smirked wickedly.
"I did try to warn him," she sing-songed, her lekku now dangling sideways.
Kanan shifted in his seat, leaning up, since gravity was pulling on him from a new angle at the moment. "Interesting," he remarked, glancing over at Hera, who was still struggling to bring their ship under control.
By putting all their weight on one side of the ship and firing up the engines on just that side, it had been easier to regain control of their momentum. Gradually, their spinning started to cut down to a shaky wobble and Hera switched the direction of gravity again, returning it to normal. Some dull thuds and groaning from the back of the ship told her they'd just found out as much in the cargo bay. Hopefully injuries were light, but there was nothing they could do for it now.
While the Ghost was no longer spinning wildly, its speed did not decrease, even as Hera fired the forward engines to try and slow them. If anything, their momentum was climbing by the second, and the white crescent on their screens was getting bigger by the second.
"Pull up!" shouted Kanan.
"Can't! We're caught in the gravity pull!"
By now even with the shaking they could make out the white image in their screens was a full-sized planet, some sort of frozen world covered in little more than ice and snow. It didn't seem to have any other features to speak of, and they couldn't be sure if they were crashing down by the equator or one of the poles, but the end result was the same: they were crashing here. Hera valiantly struggled with the controls to try and keep them as close to level as she could, but no matter how you sliced this it wasn't going to be pretty.
"Everybody brace yourselves!" she shouted.
"Hold on!" Kanan yelled, taking his own advice and gripping the co-pilot seat in tight hands.
The ship lurched hard to the side as one of the engines spluttered and almost died on them, forcing Hera to pull hard on the steering wheel to try and keep them steady. They were headed for a series of ridges in the frozen ground, great jagged spikes of ice that closely resembled a number of discarded swords. No matter which angle they approached it, it wasn't going to be smooth.
Hera managed to level out the Ghost seconds before it clipped the first ridge, sending the entire thing bouncing high into the air. The impact jostled everyone in their restraints, sending one or two crashing to the ground as the Ghost skipped another ridge, tilting sideways as the impact threw its rear forward. One of its wings was heavily gouged by the impact but managed to stay on, even as the rebel ship struck the ground, skidding hard along its side, digging up great mounds of snow and ice until finally, mercifully, it came to a stop. For an instant it teetered, as if uncertain, then finally came crashing down onto its underside, tilted at an angle but more or less upright.
The Ghost was down.
Finally satisfied the ship had come to a full and complete stop, Kanan reluctantly cracked open an eye, surprised to find himself still alive. And relatively undamaged. Yet another terrible crash he'd walk away from, it seemed. And they had the supremely excellent Captain Hera Syndulla to thank for it.
"Whoo... nice flyin' Hera," he said.
Hera cut power to the engines and slumped in her seat, letting out a breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding. All the strength just slipped right out of her.
"Thank you. Be a dear and check on the kids, would you?"
He grimaced as he unclipped his harness, he'd be bruised for a week but at least it had prevented him from getting worse injuries. Climbing to his feet he exited the cockpit and made his way aft to where the others were.
"Everyone alive back there?" Kanan asked.
"I'm okay," reported Ezra, already on his feet.
Zeb crawled to his feet, rubbing his head. "Head feels like I was run over by a speeder but I'll live."
"Sabine?"
The Mandalorian winced as she climbed to her feet with the help of Ezra and Zeb, but luckily she'd been wearing her helmet. Taking it off and shaking loose her multicolored locks of hair, she gave a thumbs up to indicate she was going to be okay.
Or at least as okay as any of them would be.
The Ghost had taken quite a beating, and the lights began to flicker as engine power started to fluctuate. Kanan quickly switched them over to auxiliary systems while they did an internal damage report. It wasn't looking very good, though the ship itself looked largely undamaged most of its systems had overheated. It was going to need a good couple of hours just to restart everything. And they had absolutely no idea just how damaged the framework outside had been busted up.
"Guess we're gonna have to go outside..." grumbled Hera, having finally recovered enough energy to rejoin them.
"How's the atmosphere?" asked Kanan. If it wasn't hospitable to humanoid life forms they did have some breathers, but there weren't many to go around. If it was really bad...
"Breathable," Sabine reported, sparing him having to make such a decision. As if anticipating his next thought, Sabine called up the next relevant bit of data as well. "Gravity slightly higher than normal, but plenty of oxygen to go around."
"Okay, Chopper, go ahead and get started on a damage report and-... where is Chopper?"
A muffled beep of indignation caused Zeb to push aside some overturned crates, revealing underneath the beaten and battered form of Chopper, who definitely looked like he'd seen better days.
"You okay you piece of scrap?" asked the lasak as he picked up the little droid and set him back on his wheels.
Boop-boop-boop. Beep.
"Bah, walk it off, you'll be fine," Ezra retorted.
Beep. Beep. Boop. Beep.
"Oh, I see... Ezra, dig him out and see if you can't get him back on his wheels?" asked Kanan. The young padawan saluted, digging through the cargo mess for some tools.
Hera grabbed the bigger lasak by the arm. "That means you're with me, big guy. Let's get outside and see how badly damaged we are. Kanan, can you get the life support back up?"
"Sure thing. I got this."
"We'll be outside if you need us.
"Just holler if you need help, I doubt our communicators will be working in this weather."
"Sure thing."
"Oh and break out the winter gear. It's colder than the void out there."
Wrapped up in heavy fur parkas, Hera and Zeb descended the side of the Ghost to check out the damage, starting with the engines. The sheer strain of being flung out of hyperspace had definitely taken its toll on the cruiser, but nothing a little patching up couldn't fix. Most of the damage was superficial in the long run.
"Say what you want about my ship but she's reliable," Hera said proudly, patting the hull. It wouldn't win any beauty contests anytime soon, but it had held up, and she couldn't have asked more of it.
The real trouble was their entry. Coming in so hot, they'd melted the ice beneath their hull, and it was starting to freeze back over. The Ghost was going to be trapped unless they blasted their way free.
"I got this part," Zeb said, unslinging his bo-rifle and cracking up the ice with a few well-placed shots. "You take a look under the hood."
Nodding, Hera did just that, shivering the whole while, her teeth starting to chatter. The Twi'lek homeworld was more notoriously warm than cold, at least the hemisphere she'd come from, and right now she would've given her left leg to be back there instead of freezing her lekku off. Prying open the panel produced a face full of smoke, and Hera coughed and choked as she waved a hand to try and dispel some of it. Sparks flew from the broken engine as she took a good look at the damage. Simply put, it wasn't pretty.
"This could take a while..." she said forlornly.
Finally having gotten Chopper back on his wheels, the makeshift hellraiser had decided to reward Ezra's efforts with a playful shock from his electrical prod. Cursing good-naturedly, the droid headed aft to begin working on repairs, while Ezra took the time to dig out his own winter coat. Temperature dropped more slowly inside of the Ghost but it was already starting to feel a little more chilly than he liked.
Like Kanan, already dressed, and Hera, Ezra's coat was a functional slate-gray item with a minimum of paler fur trimming around the hood and sleeves. A nano-machine weave was in the fibers helping to keep you warm and toasty under most wintery conditions, though outside would test that to its limits.
The doors to the cargo bay slid open. "Well, looks like nothings broken on the inside of the Ghost," Sabine reported as she walked past. "It's a hell of a mess out there though from when gravity shifted. Gonna take us forever to clean it up."
Ezra glanced up as she walked past, and felt his eyes widen. Unlike the others, Sabine's wintery garb was custom, a skintight ivory outfit which included a hood and cape, all lined in fur and marked by her distinctive artistic flair, though in a series of pale blues and lavenders instead of bright orange and gold. It did wonders to emphasize her figure...
A hand clapped him on the shoulder. "Quit staring kid, your eyes will roll right out of their sockets," Kanan said with a good-natured laugh. Ezra felt his cheeks grow hot, realizing he had been staring. Fortunately, Sabine didn't notice either of them.
"How's Chopper?"
"Back on his feet," Ezra replied. "What's next?"
"Next is waiting for Hera's report. She knows the Ghost best, she'll determine what we need to do."
Outside the Ghost, Hera had finished her initial look at the engines and was starting to remove the damaged components. Problem was her hands were shaking due to the cold, and a lot of her manual dexterity was hampered by the thick gloves she wore. Ultimately she gave up in frustration, slamming the panel closed with a lot more force than was necessary. She couldn't work like this.
Below, Zeb had managed to halt the ship sinking further into the ice, but that was about as far as he'd been able to. The rest of the ice was going to continue to advance but no more quickly than the rest of the planet, and with any luck it would settle atop of the Ghost instead of clinging to it from below. It would make takeoff easier when the time came. Pausing in his work, he took a moment to rub his hands and exhale some hot breath onto them to try and keep them warm as they started to go numb. He may've been a bit more thick-skinned than the others on the crew, but even he felt the cold pretty keenly. His aching head wasn't helping either. He was in a bad mood, and in lieu of some troopers to beat up, the ice was suffering his wrath.
"Lousy stinkin' karabast," he grumbled, blasting away the last bit of ice from the Ghost and shouldering his bo-rifle.
The wind began to pick up.
Hera noticed it first, but it wasn't long before Zeb had glanced up in the general direction of the south as well. The winds, already howling, began to positively scream, and snow began to whip up all around them as heavy clouds formed overhead, moving with alarming speed. Temperature, already unpleasantly cold, continued to drop from wind chill as the night sky darkened.
A storm was brewing.
Authors Notes:
Please leave a review if you're enjoying the story. There's much more to come.
Had to make some slight alterations to my plan when the show revealed new elements, but overall it should still work and fit within canon. Frankly a lot of it echoes what happened in the latest episode. If later proven to be a complete AU, hopefully my readers will still enjoy the story.
Trebuxet provided the very excellent cover art for the story, and indeed has countless other artistic works on their deviantart page worth checking out.