When they got to the hanger, they saw that it was mostly empty. The transport ship Duty Free was almost completely loaded with all of the rebels left on Hoth. Its name told anyone who understood gray market commerce that it had seen service as a blockade runner. Derlin hoped its luck would hold out for one more run through Imperial lines.
The only activity in the hanger were some cargo loader droids finishing up and about 25 Rebel SmuRFs standing around at the foot of a loading ramp for the ship. When Derlin and the two women walked up, the two sergeants, Roz and Meera, bellowed, "Squad, stand to and attention to orders!" The troops split into two groups; the larger, led by Roz, would protect Elsa and attack the Empire transport and storm-troopers. Meera's group was responsible for planting the explosive charges to destroy the shield generator.
Since the Rebels weren't much on rank protocol, nobody bothered saluting Major Derlin. He walked up to Roz and Meera and asked, "Everybody know what to do?" He got two nods in return. "Okay, get these two their combat harnesses, and let's load up the two float tractors. I'll make the last check with the captain of the transport. Be ready to move out in ten minutes." He walked up the ramp into the ship.
Meera loaded up his squad on a float tractor. Roz came over with another trooper to Elsa and Anna. She handed Elsa a combat harness. The other trooper handed Anna one, and was holding an extra blaster, clearly for Anna's use.
"What are these for?" Elsa asked.
"We use them to hang grenades, ammo, and supplies that we need to carry. You guys need them because if you get wounded, we also use them to grab on and drag you back to the transports."
When both the women had buckled the harnesses on, and Anna had her blaster, Roz handed both of them something that looked like a wristwatch. "Here's your com units. The earphones are in your helmets. You push this button here to talk. Pay attention to anything you hear." Elsa and Anna just stood there holding the com units, until Roz shook her head, muttered, "Sheesh" and showed them how to buckle them on their wrists.
She then held her own near her mouth and screamed, "COM CHECK!"
Elsa and Anna heard a tinny voice repeat that in their ears. They then heard, "COM GOOD!" as all the troops responded. Elsa wondered how Roz would know if someone's com WASN'T good, since they wouldn't hear her call out. But that was not her problem. She concentrated on keeping the storm going and patted her pocket to make sure the stims were still there. She could already tell she would need them.
Roz stood in front of the troops still standing and screamed again, "ATTITUDE CHECK!"
The troops responded, "This place fucking SUCKS!"
"Now give me a positive attitude check!"
"This place positively fucking SUCKS!"
"Now a negative attitude check!"
"No place will ever suck as much as this place fucking SUCKS!"
"Last, give me a comprehensive attitude check!"
"We can't believe how much this place fucking SUCKS!"
Anna had to giggle. Elsa was too focused on keeping the storm going to follow this litany. Her eyes were closed and her face was in a tight frown.
Roz turned to them and ordered, "Okay, ladies. Let's get this show on the road." The last of them boarded the float transports.
Derlin ran down the ramp from the ship and hopped in the one with Meera's squad. He trusted Roz to protect Elsa and keep the Impies busy while they sabotaged the shield generator. He made a whirling motion with his raised hand, then pointed at the hanger door, which was open just wide enough for their floaters. The doors wouldn't open fully until the 'wampa' signal had been given.
The two floaters headed out into the storm. Elsa created a little calm area for them to travel in and focused on making it storm even more intensely around the shield generator. She reached into her pocket for a stim. She would use it as soon as they arrived and she would need to attack the Imperial troops and ship. Anna checked her blaster for the hundredth time and then put her arm around Elsa's shoulders.
"This storm has completely fucked up our sensors, sir," an Imperial storm-trooper reported to Captain Disra.
Disra didn't need a report to know that. All he had to do was look at the blank screens in the command center, then see the same blank whiteness out the windows. It was almost three hours past dawn, and there had been no attack. Karath called him every 15 minutes looked for updates, accomplishing nothing but grinding Disra's nerves to a fine frazzle.
"Time to swap the guards again. The temp's dropped another ten degrees in the last hour. The men can't take much more of this, sir."
"Do it," Disra ordered. He grabbed his own helmet and walked off the bridge. He needed to show his men that he could share in their discomfort. "If Karath calls again, tell him I am making a personal inspection of the shield generator."
He would freeze his ass off, but at least he wouldn't need to listen to more bullshit from the Star Destroyer captain. It was a trade-off worth making as far as Disra was concerned.
He walked down the ramp into the blowing, swirling snow. The wind was so strong it almost blew him off the ramp. He grabbed onto the ramp's handrail and tried to orient himself to walk toward the shield generator. Two troopers came down the ramp behind him and had the same problem staying upright. The three of them started walking toward the generator, leaning into the howling wind while the guards coming off duty staggered up the ramp into the ship.
"Have you seen any sign of rebel scum?" Disra had to shout into the ear of the storm-trooper sheltering out of the wind behind the looming bulk of the generator. There really wasn't any shelter. The wind kept changing direction so that no spot was really out of the snow and sleet. The trooper had a coating of ice on his armor, and he kept trying to knock it off without much success.
"No, sir," he screamed back. "Sir, there's no way anyone could be out in this storm. We need to get the men back inside the ship or we'll lose them. Even an hour is too long."
Disra thought about this for a moment, then shouted, "You're right, get them all back inside. Now."
The Imperials had withdrawn from the shield generator and almost all of them had managed to drag themselves up the ramp without being blown off by the wind when a much stronger blast of wind and ice covered them, the ramp, and that side of the ship in a foot-thick coating of ice.
Disra, who had been the last man going inside, found himself unable to move. He was encased in ice up to his waist. He couldn't move, no matter how hard he tried. His arms were still free, so he brought his blaster around and tried to blow the ice away. Shooting carefully, he was able to get enough of it off to fall back onto the ramp.
"Disra, what's going on down there?" He heard Karath's voice in his earphones. Just what he needed.
"The storm has picked up; we can't move, we can hardly breathe it's so cold and so icy. The ice is building up a coating on the ship and anyone stupid enough to try to stay out here."
"Disra, our sensors show an anomaly almost on top of your ship. Are you sure this isn't a rebel attack?" Karath asked.
"How can it be? If we can't be out here, how could there be rebels ..." Disra was responding when he heard the word 'wampa!' in his earphones. "Who called out a wampa?" he demanded. One of those beasts could kill anyone with a single blow of its claws, and this storm was its natural hunting ground. If someone had spotted one trying to attack them, they were in real trouble.
"Who called out 'wampa'?" he demanded again. Damn it. "All troops, get out here NOW. If there's a wampa on the prowl, we need to make sure it can't get into the ship!"
Four or five storm-troopers managed to force their way down the ramp, mainly by shooting through the icy barrier that had built up. They still couldn't see anything more than a few feet away. The storm seemed to abate a tiny bit, and Disra signaled the troopers to follow him toward the prow of the ship. He ordered two of them to guard the ramp while the rest of them went looking for anything out of line.
Elsa pulled the top off her third bottle of stim and swallowed the contents in one gulp. Keeping this storm going and covering the Imperial ship in ice and snow was taking more out of her than she had anticipated. She was standing about 50 yards from the Imperial ship, even though they couldn't see it. Roz had estimated the distance when they had crept up from where they had parked the float tractor.
Elsa concentrated again, building up a bit more wind when she heard 'wampa' in her earphones. That was the signal to get the hell out of here and back to Echo base. Roz immediately screamed, "That's it, Smurfs. Everyone back to the base! Now, now, now!" The rebels surrounding Elsa started moving back toward the tractor. They only had 15 minutes to get as far away as possible or go up in pieces when the shield generator was destroyed.
Roz was holding onto Elsa's harness to pull her along. Elsa was too busy keeping the storm going to be able to pay much attention to her own movements. Anna was staying as close to Elsa as she could, blaster at the ready, trying to see anything or anyone that might attack them out of the swirling snow.
Suddenly, Roz pushed Elsa to the ground, screamed, "Storm-trooper!" and fired her blaster at the same time the Imperial fired his. They both fell to the ground, wounded.
Anna had flung herself on top of her sister with Roz's warning, and began firing her own blaster in the direction where the storm-trooper had appeared. There were plasma bolts coming back, then the whole rebel squad opened fire en masse at the threat.
Elsa was dazed from the fall. She could feel the energy draining from her. It was time to use the stim-plus. She reached into her pocket to find the red bottle, uncapped it and drank it to the dregs. The effect was almost instantaneous. She felt like she could run all the way to the North Mountain and back, carrying Sven and Kristoff in her hands. She pushed Anna off of her, got to her feet, and shouted, "Let's get out of here!" while helping Anna stand up.
"We need to grab Roz!" Anna yelled. They both took hold of the unconscious woman's harness and started dragging her toward the float tractor while the rest of the squad continued to fire at the Imperials as they boarded the tractor.
"Everyone aboard? Count off!" one of the corporals screamed. When he was sure everyone was aboard, he slapped the driver and ordered, "Get us the fuck back to base, NOW!"
The float tractor's motivators whined as the driver pushed them past their safety limits. About ten minutes later, as they arrived back at Echo base, they heard a muffled "boom" and saw a dim flash in the distance through the swirling snow. With luck, that would be the shield generator.
They drove into the hanger through the now wide-open doors. They could see that the sapper squad had already gotten here and boarded the transport. Derlin was standing at the bottom of the ramp screaming, "Come on, come on, come on! The Impies will be here as soon as they figure out what happened!"
The driver pulled the tractor as close to the ramp as he could and the troops jumped out and started running up the ramp. Two of them were carrying Roz's limp body.
Derlin grabbed Elsa by the hand, and urged her onto the ramp. "Come on, it's time to get out of here. You did it!"
Elsa was beginning to get light headed and felt faint. She was afraid the stim was wearing off quicker than Derlin had said it would. Considering all the energy she was expending keeping the storm going, it wasn't hard to understand why.
She and Anna started to follow Derlin onto the transport when Elsa heard a voice saying, "No, Elsa, stay here. I can't open a portal on a moving ship!" She thought it sounded like Kenobi but she couldn't be sure. She stopped dead, Anna ran into her and almost knocked her over.
Derlin looked back and screamed, "What are you waiting for?"
She turned away and ran back down the ramp, pulling Anna along with her. "You go, Major. We have to stay if we have any hope of returning to our home!"
The Major was torn. "The Impies are coming. If they capture you, they'll …"
She waved him off. "I know. They won't capture us. Go! Or this has all been for nothing!" She continued pulling Anna away from the ship.
Derlin saluted her, then ran up the ramp, which was already closing as the transport ship rose a few feet in the air and started moving toward the open hanger doors. Elsa and Anna heard a loud 'whoosh' once the ship was clear of the doors, then there was no sound but the storm still swirling outside.
Elsa collapsed against the wall, breathing hard. Anna dropped to her knees next to her, concern written large on her face. "Elsa, are you okay?"
"Not really. I took that stim plus, and I can feel it wearing off. The storm will diminish quickly if I can't keep feeding it. I heard Kenobi tell us to stay here. But if the storm-troopers find us before he opens that portal thing, we can't be captured, Anna. It's up to you. I have nothing left." Elsa kept trying to pull in as much air as she could in great gulping gasps.
Anna stayed next to her sister and checked to be sure her blaster was ready to fire. If she had to, she would make sure that neither she nor Elsa was captured and turned over to the torture bots. "Oh, Kristoff. If we don't make it back, I hope you find someone to love."
The minutes ticked by. Anna could tell the storm was losing power quickly. She glanced down at Elsa. Her sister was clearly losing consciousness. Elsa reached out for Anna's hand. "Anna, if we don't make it … I'm sorry I got us into this. I love you." And she blacked out.
It was like that day on the fjord. The storm stopped dead, snowflakes suspended in mid-air, moving oh so slowly. Anna gently laid Elsa flat on the ground, hoping she would regain consciousness at least. Once she had her settled, she picked up her blaster again and turned to watch the hanger doors. They were against the hanger wall, behind some scattered crates, so it wouldn't be immediately obvious to anyone that the two women were there.
Anna was just beginning to wonder if she should try to move Elsa further inside the base when two things happened simultaneously: Anna saw movement at the hanger doors, and the swirling light that she had seen an eternity ago at the Ice Palace formed over their heads. It was going to be a close-run thing. Anna readied her blaster. "We'll be okay, Elsa. One way or another. The Two Terrible Sisters of Arendelle, together."
Captain Malcor Disra was leading the remnants of the storm-troopers left after the rebel attack. They had been able to follow the traces of the float tractors because the storm had diminished enough for the sensors on the Star Destroyer to give them direction. Captain Karath had been almost incoherent in his rage when Disra reported they were under blaster fire.
The squad of storm-troopers was cautious entering the hanger. Disra cursed when he saw it was empty. If there had been a rebel transport here, it had been able to leave since the shield generator had been destroyed by sabotage. "Vader will have my head on a spike when we rejoin the fleet." Disra was in despair.
"Sir, what's that light over there?" One of his storm-troopers was pointing toward the far wall of the hanger. There did seem to be something floating in the air, a light of some sort.
"Check it out, but carefully. It might be a booby trap, something to draw us in close enough for the rebel scum to finish us off," Disra ordered. The squad began to move slowly toward the anomaly.
"Come on, Kenobi, we haven't got all day." Anna muttered to herself as she crouched behind the crates. That damn portal was growing too slowly for her liking. She remembered what he had said, "Your magic is similar enough to The Force that I can tap into it. That's how I was able to transport you here to Hoth with the Force Portal." She wondered if the problem was that Elsa was unconscious. Would more stim give her enough energy to form the Portal? She dig around in her pocket and pulled out a yellow bottle.
"If I give her this, I might kill her." Anna dithered. "If I don't, we'll both die."
Anna leaned over, kissed Elsa, muttered, "I'm so sorry, Elsa," and held the bottle to her sister's lips. Dropping the empty bottle, she wrapped her arms around Elsa, closed her eyes and prayed that she had made the right choice.
As Disra and his troops approached the whirlpool, it suddenly got bigger and brighter. It swooped behind some crates, then shrank to a point and vanished.
They came up to the crates and saw nothing on the floor except a rebel blaster.
The Imperial Captain shrugged and observed, "Whatever that was, it's gone now. Let's search the rest of this base. It looks empty, but we have to be sure."
The troopers disbursed to begin their search.
Disra contemplated the end to his career while they did. He decided to use his blaster to preempt any punishment Captain Karath might think up. "I'll save Vader the trouble of ..." A light brighter than the sun, then … blackness.