Well, it's back to school for me, chums, but not to worry, updates will continue every Sunday, unless I'm really busy revising for something. :)

This week I am truly over the moon to say that I have loads of shout-outs: Nanobot5770, SerenityMoonPrincess, Nyce, iloveashandquinn, djgirl911, Lywick, Taboo22 and Katyperry22 - that's eight reviews for one chapter! :D You guys are the best! Anyway, hope you enjoy this week's chapter - enough for it to get nine reviews? Pretty please?

Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Only Alice is mine.

Hoth turned out to be just as cold as Han had promised. Alice was tremendously grateful for her warm clothes even in the hangar, where icy winds blasted their way through the tiniest cracks in the walls and doors. From what she could see, this rebel base aircraft hangar was much the same as the one they'd just left, apart from the slick layer of ice that coated the walls.

"I'm surprised we even managed to get the ship down without the engines freezing," Alice said to Leia, pointing out the layer of frost that was already forming on the hull of the ship. "God, I hate the cold. Give me a nice beach any day."

"I know exactly what you mean, miss."

"Engineer Bob!" Alice exclaimed cheerfully, giving the old engineer an unexpected hug, "How are you?"

"Alice, forgive me, we should go and meet with the General…"

"Oh, yeah, of course. I'll catch you later, Bob."

Straightening his hat (which had come askew in the suddenness of the hug), he gave her a wave, "See you around, miss!"

"So," Alice said, turning back to Leia, "now that we're here, what exactly is the Rebel Alliance up to? I mean, we already blew up the Death Star…what's next on the list?"

"Well," Leia said, with a small sigh, "our top priority is getting all of our troops off Yavin and safely here. Then…well. I fear we may have misled you if you think we're blowing up major Imperial weapons every other day. Mostly it's little things: intercepting communications, sabotaging vessels, stealing supplies and so on."

"Riiight…you know, it's quite comforting to hear that, actually."

"Really? How so?"

"Well, stuff like that sounds a lot more manageable than, 'Day after tomorrow, direct assault on the Emperor, nine o'clock'."

Leia laughed, "I don't think we're quite there yet."

"I'm sure you will be," Alice said cheerily, "I mean, how long a gap can there be between movies anyway?"

"…What?"

"Princess Leia!" They glanced up to see a fatherly looking man in a puffy jacket walking towards them.

"General Rieekan," Leia said, going directly into princess mode, "it's good to see you."

"Good to see you too, your highness. And your companion…?"

"Miss Alice Miller. She's a friend."

"Hello. Alice Miller. Friend."

"Ah," he said, giving Alice a warm smile and a handshake, "welcome to Hoth, Miss Miller. Your chambers have already been prepared, your highness. I can, of course arrange some for Miss Miller as well."

"Thank you, General. That would be ideal."

"Thanks," Alice piped up, gratefully.

"Not at all. But I'm glad you've arrived, we have a lot to discuss…"

"General, perhaps Alice might be given a tour of the base while we talk?" She turned to Alice with a small smile, "Something to keep you occupied."

"Ooh," Alice said cheerfully, "that sounds good."

"Of course," Rieekan said, beckoning a young woman in a fluffy coat over, "Private Falern, would you give Miss Miller a brief tour of the base? Your shift is over, I assume?"

"Yes sir." OMG, Alice thought, stunned, another girl!

"Very good. Miss Miller, I hope to see you again soon."

"Bye!" He nodded politely, and Leia waved as they rounded a corner and disappeared.

Alice turned to her new companion and found a pretty blonde-haired woman smiling at her, "Hi. I'm Lana."

"Oh," Alice said, brightly, "hi! I'm Alice. I can't tell you how nice it is to see another woman! I honestly thought Leia and I were about the only two in this entire galaxy."

The woman, Lana, laughed, "Not quite. Right, shall we get started with the tour? What do you want to see?"

"Well…I've been to the main hangar, and I've been here. And that's about it. So…everywhere you think will be useful. You guys have a dining room-type thing, right?"

"Of course," Lana said, smiling, "this way."

Lana, it turned out, was quite the chatterbox. She took Alice to all the major locations around the base: canteen, main hangar, main control room, and living quarters. As she guided her around, she told her all about herself; her home planet, her family, and her work in the rebellion as a technician, monitoring communications between all the rebel ships within range.

"That's pretty cool," Alice said, smiling, "I don't really do much, as you can probably tell. Being new to the whole rebellion thing…"

"Oh, yeah," Lana said, her eyes lighting up, "now I remember you. You're that friend of Commander Skywalker's! I thought you looked familiar."

Alice blinked, "Luke's a commander now?"

"Oh yeah," said her companion, raising her eyebrows, "blowing up the Death Star, fast track to promotion I guess. Well, anyway, here we are, back to the main hangar. Do you need anything else before I go?"

"Nope," Alice said, catching a tell-tale glimpse of blue engineer suit from across the hangar, "I'm good. See you around, Lana!"

"Bye, Alice."

As Lana moved away, Alice skipped off towards the wrinkly little figure of Engineer Bob, "Hey, old chum! Told you I'd come back. Whatcha doing?"

"Hello, miss. I'm trying to fix the heating in this hangar so we can start defrosting the ships. The speeders that came in a couple of days ago with the first of us are already useless, and I expect her highness's ship will be likewise inoperable in a matter of hours."

"Oh…d'you need some help? I mean, I can't actually fix things, but I can carry tools and stuff."

"Don't put yourself down, miss," Bob said, apparently not recognising Alice as the technology repelling creature she was.

"I'm serious. But honestly, I'd be happy to help. I feel pretty useless most of the time around here, so…"

"Well then of course miss, and thank you. If you could please fetch a laser soldering gun from my toolbox over there…"

Teehee…toolbox. "No problem."

This more or less set the tone for the rest of Alice's afternoon – Bob described things for her and she hurried off to get them, some times more successfully than others.

As evening began to set in however, Alice decided it was getting pretty cold in the hangar, and waving Bob a cheerful goodbye, set off to try and find the main control room and Leia. Right, mustn't let Lana down. She was very specific with her directions…hope I can remember where I'm going…

She couldn't. Not too long after starting out, Alice found herself in a completely unfamiliar stretch of corridor – even worse, she couldn't spot anyone to ask for directions. …Oh yay. This is like my Bronze Duke of Edinburgh expedition all over again. Well, at least it's not raining.

She wandered on a bit further, and was just about to turn a corner when she heard an odd sound halfway between a baa and a quack. What the…?

She retraced her steps, following the source of the noise until she found a doorway into a large, brightly lit room full of…creatures. Whatever they were, they were odd looking things, a weird fusion of camel, dinosaur and giraffe with thick, coarse fur, tiny little t-rex arms and long necks. The one that stood closest to Alice was being brushed by a young woman with dark brown hair, and as she rubbed down its neck, it let out that odd honking, quacking noise again.

Er…has someone been running some really twisted experiments?

A young soldier turned round suddenly, caught her staring and asked, "Can I help you?"

"What are these…things?"

He grinned, "They're called tauntauns – they're indigenous to the planet."

"They stink," Alice commented, cupping her hand over her mouth.

"That's true," he said, "but since our speeders aren't working, we're using them to run patrols outside. They move well on the snow and can withstand cold temperatures long enough for us to get our job done."

"I see," she said, and was about to leave, when suddenly, the man peered at her, and said, "You're that friend of Luke Skywalker, the guy that blew up the Death Star, right?"

"Um, yeah," she said, slightly put out that it seemed everyone knew her simply from her connection to Luke, "Alice Miller, good to meet you."

"Well, next time you see Commander Skywalker, could you just tell him that all of us are really grateful to him? He saved all of our lives back there on Yavin."

Alice saw he was sincere, and softened towards him slightly. "Sure. Of course, I'll tell him. First chance I get. Hey, listen, what's your name?"

"I'm Tal."

"Good to meet you, Tal," she said, smiling, "have fun with your…tomtoms…"

"Tauntauns," he corrected, smiling.

"Tauntauns," she repeated, "got it."

Alice left the room and started to walk, only realising when she was halfway down the corridor that she still had no idea where she was going. Good one Alice, forgetting to ask for directions…

"Alice!"

She blinked, and grinned, "Leia! Your timing is perfect, mon petit choufleur!"

"...What?"

Alice frowned, "I think I just called you my little cauliflower. Funny what you remember, isn't it. I came to ask you, do you know where my bedroom is?"

"Oh, yes, of course. I'll take you there. Come on."

They started to walk, Alice skipping every other step to keep herself warm.

"Alice, how would you feel about doing more around here?"

She tilted her head, "What kind of more?"

"Just…general odd jobs, carrying, fetching and so on."

"Oh…sure. Yeah, I'd love to."

"Really?"

Alice blinked, slightly concerned by the expression of manic glee on Leia's face, and wondering just what she'd let herself in for.

"…Yes…?"

"Perfect," Leia said, sounding satisfied. She led them round a corner and stopped by a door that was encouragingly free of ice, "This is your room."

"Thanks, Leia."

"I'm really grateful that you want to help us," Leia enthused, her eyes sparkling in a way that Alice hadn't seen them sparkle before, "You don't mind starting first thing in the morning, do you?"

"Um...no. Of course not."

"Good." With one last brilliant smile, the princess departed, leaving an uneasy Alice behind her.

BREAK

The next day, Alice was abruptly awoken by a very loud banging on her door. With a groan of protest, she lifted her head from her warm pillow and shouted, "Who is it?"

She got no reply; but after a slight pause, the knocking started again. ...Why? Feeling rather grumpier than usual, Alice got slowly (very slowly) to her feet, yawned hugely, staggered over to the door and slammed the opening switch. The door slid smoothly back to reveal a short man with a bristly moustache and some rather excellent sideburns. ...What?!

"Alice Miller?" His voice was sharp and very loud - far too loud, in Alice's opinion, for this early in the morning.

She stared at him, apprehensive. "Yes…?"

"Princess Leia has instructed me to oversee your training. I am Captain Starn. Hmm…a little small, but you look healthy enough."

"Um…thank you? Wait, what? What training?"

He frowned at her as if she were being deliberately dense. "Weapons and hand-to-hand combat training. Compulsory for all members of the Rebel Alliance."

"What? I thought-"

"Hurry up! Get dressed."

"…But-"

"Now, soldier!"

"Fine!"

What is happening?!

Utterly bewildered, Alice threw on her clothes as quickly as she could and went to the door to find Starn still standing there, looking as though he hadn't moved a muscle in all the time that she'd been getting ready.

"Uh…"

"Follow me," he said, cutting her off before she could even begin to formulate a question. What?! Still, what with being completely clueless as to what was actually happening, all she could do was to follow Captain Starn, power-walking to keep up with his extremely quick marching. He led her across the entire base, including through what looked like a changing room packed with rebel soldiers, who all stared at her as she passed. She felt heat building in her cheeks, and kept her eyes firmly on the floor. Leia, I'm going to kill you…

Suddenly, Captain Bristly came to an abrupt halt, so abrupt, in fact, that she slammed into his back. It was quite muscly, so she sort of bounced back off again and tried to look innocent when he spun to face her. "We'll start with the basic physical checks."

Alice hadn't thought that a base that had been put together in a matter of days, by a tiny group of rebels, on an ice planet would have had a training room. Turned out it did. A very mean training room with an assault course, and sciencey treadmills and even a virtual shooting range. And Starn insisted on putting Alice through every single activity, just to make sure she was physically eligible to be a member of the rebel army.

By the end of the day, she felt like she'd run a marathon. Wearing steel toe-capped boots. And carrying a twenty kilo rucksack. In thirty degree heat. Blindfolded.

"Can we stop now?" She panted, feeling a slight and vaguely worrying trembling throughout all her muscles, that probably meant she was about to collapse.

He stared at her disapprovingly, as if he expected her to be able to exercise twice as much and still be able to actually walk back to her room.

"We're done for today," he said, "tomorrow, we'll start on the weapons training." Alice perked up a little, "So not too much exercise, yeah?"

He shook his head despairingly, "0800 hours, Miss Miller. Right here."

"Aye aye, Captain," she said, raising a slightly wobbly arm in a salute. He twitched his moustache and strode away. Right.

Wheeling around, Alice limped her way through the base to the main control room, where she found Leia and several important people talking about important things. She lurked in the corner, eyeing the princess mutinously until finally, she turned away from her conversation to see Alice glaring at her.

"Alice. How are you?"

"I've been better. I had some training today." She narrowed her eyes, but tried to avoid doing anything else. Everywhere hurt when she moved.

"Ah." Leia took this information, pieced it together with the murderous look in Alice's eyes, and wisely took a step back, "And how was it?"

"It was tiring," she said, "but more importantly, I believe it was your idea?"

"I thought it would be good for you to know how to defend yourself. We're safe here for a little while, but we don't know when we'll be forced to leave. You should be ready."

Alice hmphed. She could see the sense in Leia's words, but didn't want to admit it. "Alright. But don't expect me to forgive you until after my body stops hurting." Leia smiled slightly, "Very well. Now, perhaps you would like to retire to your rooms? Your clothes are a bit…damp."

Almost beyond caring, Alice glanced down at her rather sweaty clothes. "Fine. I'll see you in the morning. Some of us have an early start." She tried one more time to evil Leia, but the princess had already turned away, and thus escaped the death glare. Traitor…

The next morning, Alice woke up in even more pain than she'd been in the day before; all the aches and bruises from yesterday had apparently doubled in severity over night, and she was incredibly stiff. Kill me now. She got to her feet with a groan, and very slowly made her way through the base to the canteen, then to the training room, where, as promised, Captain Starn was waiting for her.

"Today, Miss Miller," he said, at a volume she thought was inappropriately loud for eight o'clock in the morning, "we will be teaching you to use a firearm."

"Right," she said, trying for enthusiasm, "great. Super. Swell. Awesome. Amaz-"

"That's enough."

"Sorry."

"This is the standard issue blaster we give to our troops." He held out a large, rifle-esque gun, which looked really rather heavy. Alice bit her lip, "Um…I don't think…"

He raised an eyebrow, "No. Neither do I. This is the weapon you will be using." From a rack littered with similar weapons, he plucked a smaller blaster, more the size of a handgun. He displayed it to her, but when she reached out to take it, he snatched it away.

"Oh, no, not yet, Miller. Right. Here's the handle. Here's the trigger. Here's the safety catch. Even when the safety is on, you never point the weapon at someone outside of a battle environment. Do not drop it, keep it aimed at the floor while carrying it outside of a holster, and always keep your finger away from the trigger until the last possible moment. Got that?"

Alice tilted her head on one side. "So…it's a bit like carrying scissors?"

"…What?"

"You know…always cover the blades with your hand, point it at the floor, don't run with them…no?"

"No." Looking as though he would probably regret his decision, he held the blaster out towards her, handle-first.

Alice took it gingerly with two fingers, trying to touch as little of it as possible. True, she'd used the blaster Han had given her on board the Death Star, but only the sort of...clubbing end. And as much as she resented Starn for his ruthless 'testing' the day before, she really didn't want to accidentally shoot him.

Starn gave an exasperated huff, and wrapped her fingers roughly around the handle of the gun, repositioning her grip. "Put your thumb here. No, not there, here. You'll drop it at the first sign of trouble if you hold it like that. And what did I say about keeping your hands away from the trigger?"

Eventually, he was satisfied with how she was holding it, and got around to actually teaching her how to fire it and hit what she was aiming for. Unlike the policemen in the few action films Alice had seen (one of which was Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz, which she didn't think really counted), Starn didn't seem to go for the 'balance the gun on one hand, hold it with the other and aim carefully' style. His was more the 'hang on with both hands and keep on blasting until you hit your target' approach. Or perhaps he had simply resorted to that method after Alice succeeded in shooting so wildly that the shots didn't even register on the simulator.

"Argh!" Alice complained, pulling off the simulation goggles, and chucking them dispiritedly to the floor, "It's so difficult! I'll never be able to hit anything, unless it's an accident."

"Agreed," Starn said, sounding, for once, more weary than she was, "perhaps it's time we take a break. You have twenty-five minutes to eat, then I want you straight back here. Understood?"

"Uh…yes?"

He sighed, and departed, shaking his head.

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