Flaming Water, Frozen Earth
Chapter Three
-DOCUMENT START-
INFORMATION AVAILABLE FOR PUBLIC DISCLOSURE:
DOCUMENT#: SKN14890
CENTRAL GALACTIC LIBRARY, CORUSCANT
THE ALLIANCE STARBIRD
Immortalized by its use by the Alliance to Restore the Republic during the Galactic Civil War, THE ALLIANCE STARBIRD was adopted in the Year 33 of the Galactic Standard Calendar by the Alliance at the time of its founding in order to serve as the official symbol of the united rebel resistance opposing the rule of the Galactic Empire under Emperor Palpatine.
Drawn in the form of a crest, the Starbird depicts a stylized rising phoenix lifting its wings in flight, a metaphor for the Alliance's birth amidst the ashes of The Old Republic. The origin of the symbol is unclear, with theories ranging from its evolution from a mythological Aldaraanian rune (note) to its original identity as the family crest of one of the Alliance's lesser-known founding members. The original design in crimson is considered most emblematic of the Rebel Alliance, though renditions in alternative colors such as blue, gold, and white on a field of blue or red were also commonly used both during and after the conflict. Soldiers and pilots of the Alliance regularly painted the symbol upon combat vehicles and flight helmets or incorporated it into their battle standards with varying degrees of fidelity.
Following its adoption, the Alliance Starbird rapidly achieved instant recognition across the stars, capturing the imagination of billions of dissidents, activists, and resistance groups across known space. To many, its sharp aesthetic contrast to the harsh angularity of the Seal of the Galactic Empire served as a fitting illustration to the ideals separating the two warring factions. Iconic and memorable, the Starbird transcended its role as a mere crest of the Rebel Alliance, embodying and inspiring a collective spirit of sacrifice, valor, perseverance, and hope with a single work of artistic genius. Perhaps, more so than any other symbol before or after it, the Starbird is destined to be forever remembered in the annals of the history of the galaxy, long after all other emblems have been forgotten amidst the countless millennia of future time.
-THE 822nd ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA, VOL 57 (MILITARY AFFAIRS AND GALACTIC POLITICS)
-END OF DOCUMENT—
OOOOO
The next days passed unremarkably, much as the previous months had. They patrolled the base perimeter daily, sweeping the skies in groups of four amidst all but the harshest weather. At home, the never-ending work of expanding and renovating Echo Base continued, with construction crews swarming this hall or that one to add new rooms and transform recent, temporary work into more permanent architecture.
Here, on the edge of the known galaxy, they found it easy to lose track of the passage of time. In the skies above Hoth, the subtle changes in temperature and weather patterns that marked the transition between seasons were invisible to the eye, leaving the land locked in seemingly eternal winter. Indoors, the glare of stale artificial lighting and the featureless underground caverns concealed even the cycle of day and night. They lived their lives by their chronometers, waking, eating, reporting to duty, and retiring at the appointed hours as though they were droids.
But as regimented and featureless as their Echo Base service was, the young pilots and soldiers enjoyed ample free time to themselves. In the mess hall, training centers, and squadron lounge, they could devote their off hours to recreation, harmless pranks, and idle conversation. At times, Armin would smile at the thought that they had managed to bring an atmosphere of life and lightheartedness to the surface of a planet that had never before known human habitation.
But, even as laughs rippled around the squadron pilots' lounge in response to an offhand comment by Connie, Armin looked to the far wall across the room and was reminded of the grim, ever-present galactic backdrop to their banter. More so than the military uniforms they were wearing or the spartan if comfortable furniture around them, the posters and makeshift memorials fixed to the walls reminded Armin that this was no cantina, young workers club, or student common area.
Remember Aldaraan. The words stretched across the length of the room, printed in thin red lettering below the Alliance Starbird on a long white banner.
Below the banner hung several memorial plaques. Trinkets and mementos from past campaigns sat in the center small tables placed against the wall. A poster with the squadron's crest—a crossed pair of blue-and-white wings—graced the place of honor overlooking the rest of the lounge.
Ilse Langnar. A pilot from before Armin's time. Her name and several lines written in remembrance had been etched in gold across a panel scavenged from an X-wing's transparisteel canopy. While docking her damaged starfighter following a routine deep-space raid on Imperial shipping, her ship had suddenly lost power just short of the hangar doors, diving and crashing into the cruiser's hull.
The collection of items that the squadron had accumulated over time told their own story of the unit's history since its foundation. The assemblage included a TIE fighter pilot's helmet, recovered from the ruins of a destroyed asteroid base, a toy Star Destroyer, obtained during a raid on a shipyard planet, an ornate holochess set, liberated from an Imperial governor's luxury space yacht, a sandstone block from one of the abandoned pyramids on Yavin IV, and the most recent addition—a tauntaun skull to commemorate their arrival on Hoth.
Armin chuckled as he scrutinized the pale tauntaun skull. He turned to look at where Sasha was sitting upside-down in her armchair, legs draped over the back of the seat as she squinted at a datapad. Remembering how Bertholt's face had gone white when she had first brought the artifact into the lounge, Armin permitted himself a smile at the memory of how Sasha, Connie, and Eren had easily managed to convince him that Sasha had personally hunted down and consumed the tauntaun in question.
The culprits and the gullible victim in question were all present at the moment. Connie was pouring himself a third cup of caf from the machine in the corner of the lounge. Bertholt, exhausted from his patrol that day, was struggling not to doze off next to Thomas and Marco on the sofa.
Much of the rest of the squadron was scattered around the room. Dazz, Jean, and Reiner occupied the other long sofa, engaged in a heated argument over who the most attractive bachelorette on base was. As Armin watched, Dazz declared that Princess Leia was the most beautiful woman that he had ever laid eyes upon, immediately evoking furious, red-faced reactions from both Jean and Reiner.
"You can't be serious, Dazz—have you even seen Christa?"
"Forget Christa! You must have been born blind if you think the princess is better-looking than Mikasa!"
Armin's eyes widened at Jean's outburst, but to his surprise, the expected reaction from Eren did not materialize. Searching the room for his childhood friend, he found Eren off to one side, to all appearances oblivious to the conversation taking place. Petra, Erd, Auruo, and Gunther sat around a table playing a four-way multiplayer datapad game of some sort. Hanji and Eren stood behind them with their eyes fixed on the small screens. Watching over the players' shoulders, the two of them shook their heads in unison just as Auruo let out a crow of victory and punched a fist into the air.
Only nine of the squadron's twenty-four members were missing. Commander Erwin, Captain Levi, and Captain Zacharius had been called to participate in a meeting. Hannah and Franz had withdrawn elsewhere to do Hannah-and-Franz things. Lastly, Christa, Ymir, Mina, and Mikasa had left together for the blaster range to determine who the second-best female marksman in the squadron was, having grudgingly been forced to concede over the past year that they would never compete with Sasha for the top title.
Looking around at the fourteen other pilots filling the room, Armin reflected on how close he had become with those around him since their transfer to Hoth. One year. One year had passed since the squadron had fought in combat last, since they had last raised glasses to the memory of comrades recently lost. Following the arrival of the new recruits three months ago, this constituted the longest length of time that Armin could remember in which the squadron roster had not changed.
"Hey Arlert!"
Armin jumped. The shout across the room had originated from Auruo, of all people.
Seeing that he had Armin's attention, the veteran chuckled before asking, "Is it true that Eren failed his pilot qualification exam three times before he finally passed?"
"Who told you that!?" Eren bellowed, causing Sasha to drop her datapad in surprise.
Auruo eased back in his chair and grinned at the younger pilot's indignation. "Kirstein did, which is why I didn't believe him at first."
"He did," Armin admitted, shooting an apologetic glance at his friend before hastily adding, "but it wasn't his fault—his nav software was completely miscalibrated during his first three attempts."
Reiner spoke up, corroborating Armin's statement. "That's right. Eren passed with top marks once they repaired his X-wing."
"Jean, what are you trying to pull by telling everyone about that anyway!?" Eren exclaimed, rounding on Jean with a deadly glare.
Jean shrugged, his lips parting in a mischievous smile. "Well Auruo was just wondering why you haven't managed to score a kill in combat yet."
"Well, I'd like to see anyone score a kill with Mikasa as their wingmate," Thomas commented to general agreement.
"Jean, you only bagged that TIE fighter over Rodia because Bertholt knocked out its engines…" Eren countered, bristling.
As Jean and Eren began trading barbs across the length of the room, Armin caught Reiner's eye and shook his head ruefully.
Privately, Armin found himself wondering yet again at the strangeness of their childish rivalry. How had the two of them ended up at such odds with one another when there was every reason for them to have become good friends? In truth, Jean and Eren shared far more in common with one another than they cared to admit—confidence, stubbornness, outgoing personalities, initiative, fierce loyalty to their friends and comrades, excellent piloting abilities, even the same boyish sense of humor.
Armin had never understood the pettiness of the conflicts that ignited from time to time between his fellow squadron members. Why did Captain Levi have to be so harshly critical of Mikasa's rare mistakes when she generally excelled in her duties to such an extent that she made perfection look normal and expected? There was no reason that Armin could think of for Ymir and Reiner to be unable to be on speaking terms, nor did Mikasa have any cause to be as terse and dismissive towards Sasha as she sometimes was. Was it so difficult for them to look past their meaningless disagreements and acknowledge the admirable qualities in one another?
At that moment, a gentle knock drew their attention to the ready room door.
"Password?" Connie called out jokingly, cutting through Eren and Jean's continued bickering. The rest of the room, however, fell silent and turned to face the entryway with curiosity. They all knew that no fellow squadron member would bother to knock before entering.
The person on the other side of the doors, however, seemed familiar enough with the squadron to know that neither a password nor a passkey were required. The doors hissed open, and the newcomer stepped inside before heading straight for the caf machine.
Connie laughed. "Oh, hey Annie."
As Armin predicted, the story of Annie and Chewbacca's hand-to-hand skirmish had spread throughout the base faster than lightspeed, with the result that Annie had begun seeking refuge in the Scouting Corps squadron lounge to avoid persistent requests by strangers to retell her side of the story.
Sure enough, Annie stepped up to the machine, poured herself a cup of the hot beverage, and leaned against the counter as she took a sip. As always, Armin marveled at how she could march straight into their midst without saying a word only to casually behave as though she'd been there all along.
"We should start charging you an admission fee to come in here," Gunther joked.
Annie ignored the comment.
"I should charge all of you a fee for the privilege of being in my presence," proposed Auruo, guffawing loudly at the looks of deep exasperation that Petra, Gunther, and Erd immediately shot in his direction. Hanji chuckled, then snatched Auruo's datapad from his hands before he could react and swiped him gently across the head with it.
"Hey!" Auruo yelped.
Armin looked back at Annie and suppressed a smile. The way she just stood there, uninterested in all of them, one would think that she had the lounge all to herself. Still, something seemed oddly tense about her today…
"So Annie," Jean began with a yawn. "What have you Intelligence folks been working on these days?"
None of them expected Annie's peculiar reaction to Jean's question. Her eyes suddenly grew round in surprise, and she straightened. Setting her cup on the counter behind her, she exclaimed, "You don't know?"
She surveyed their bewildered faces, her expression suddenly darkening. Seeing that their confusion was genuine, she turned to Jean and explained, "The base is in an uproar. A surface patrol discovered an Imperial probe droid outside Perimeter Rose a couple of hours ago."
Instantly, the room fell into a deadly silence. A heartbeat passed before finally Erd leaned forward and demanded, "Was it transmitting?"
"We intercepted a transmission before it self-destructed," Annie confirmed. "Cryptology has just started working to decode it."
Once again, they sat in silence as the implications of what had happened dawned on them.
Jean looked as though he had turned into a ghost. His face pale and fixed in an eerie smirk, he croaked hoarsely, "Well… that's it then… isn't it?"
The four special operations pilots seated around the table looked the most shocked out of all of them. Their eyes were wide and unfocused as the four veterans stared across the room, their thoughts seemingly light-years away.
Armin's own mind was working furiously, trying to guess at the probability that the base's location had been revealed. Where had the probe been captured? In a way, it didn't matter whether the droid had managed to transmit the news of its discovery or not. The Alliance leadership was guaranteed to play things safe and abandon Echo Base rather than risk everything on the faint hope that the probe had been neutralized in time. But if a droid had been found on the planet's surface, what was the likelihood that Imperial forces were already on the planet?
Suddenly, they became aware of excited chatter and what sounded like a dozen pairs of military boots in the hallway outside. Before anybody could react, the door to the pilot's lounge had hissed open again.
Commander Erwin strode into the room, flanked by Levi and Mike Zacharius. Behind them followed the remaining members of the Scouting Corps squadron. Hannah and Franz ducked into the lounge next, their faces red. Behind them, Mikasa, Ymir, Christa, and Mina filed through the doorway.
Most of the group of newcomers, Armin observed, seemed apprehensive. The Commander, however, looked strangely alive as he walked towards the center of the room. The brooding, quiet squadron leader of the last few weeks was nowhere to be seen, replaced instead by a man with fire in his eyes and steel in his step as he mounted the low platform in the middle of the lounge.
The regular pilots hurriedly set aside their snacks, cups, datapads and saluted their commander. Even Annie pushed herself away from the counter and stood at attention. Sasha, wriggling to extricate herself from her chair, was the last to rise to her feet.
The commander nodded to acknowledge their salute.
"At ease, pilots."
Erwin frowned as he recognized Annie standing to one side, then smiled thinly. "I see. I take it that you have all heard the news, then."
As Levi and Mike took their places at his shoulder, the commander turned to face the rest of the squadron and raised his voice. "Two hours ago, Captain Solo and Chewbacca encountered and destroyed what we believe to have been an Imperial deep-space probe droid about three and a half kilometers northeast of the primary shield generator complex."
This time, there was no reaction to the news. Armin looked around the lounge and saw grim acceptance written across two dozen faces.
"General Rieekan has given the order to prepare the base for evacuation." Erwin continued. "Our squadron is to be deployed along with Rogue Group in direct participation in the base's defense. A battle alert is now in effect. We can expect Imperial forces to arrive in-system in as little as twelve hours."
Erwin paused, making sure that his previous sentence had sunk in.
"A more detailed briefing is scheduled for 0600 hours tomorrow morning in the main hangar. Report fully dressed for flight operations. That is all."
The commander finished speaking. Standing before them, he closed his eyes for a moment and visibly took a deep breath before exhaling as though meditating.
Annie was the first to excuse herself, leaving quietly through the doorway with as little ceremony as she had entered.
So their brief escape from the war had ended, Armin concluded bitterly. Once again, they would return to the nerve-racking cycle of desperate fight and flight—an endless pursuit across the stars that barely kept them one step ahead of the Star Destroyers and their legions of stormtroopers. He supposed that the clemency they had enjoyed had been too merciful to last. The galaxy, it seemed, always found a way of balancing happiness with grief, peace with strife.
He looked around the room. Christa appeared as if she was dreaming. Mikasa and Jean's expressions were fatalistic. Auruo had returned to his seat with a failed wisecrack that elicited only a grunt from Hanji in response. Seeing Mina trying to catch his eye, Armin glanced at her and read the deep worry in her frown.
As the commander stepped down from the raised area at the center of the room, Captain Levi had a final word for them.
"Get some rest, and be prepared to scramble at a moment's notice."
That night, none of them slept a wink.
OOOOO
"Attention base personnel, Imperial ships have entered the lunar perimeter! Prepare for immediate evacuation! All combat troops, report to your defensive stations!"
This was real. General Rieekan's transmission over the base intercom the next morning drove home the grim truth: the long-anticipated nightmare had materialized. The Empire had come.
There was no alert siren, as there had been on Yavin IV. Armin found the absence of an alarm blaring both eerie yet welcome. Instead, the pilots of the Scouting Corps squadron dressed in silence, save for the rustle of clothing and equipment, punctuated by the sound of metal lockers opening and closing. All around him, Armin's friends and squadron-mates bore forced, fixed faces as they dashed to and from their lockers, emptying them of their contents and pulling on their uniforms and equipment. Their expressions all revealed the same battling emotions: acute anxiety, disbelief, grim resignation—all clashing turbulently in their minds amidst their headlong rush in preparation for battle.
They left the locker doors wide open and their off-duty clothing strewn across the floor. Sasha's small holomirror. Mikasa's stuffed bantha toy. Jean's set of watercolor paints. Connie's collection of galactic souvenirs. These trinkets and more, the trappings of the base comforts that they had grown accustomed to, were shoved aside on their shelves and forgotten. Stepping and hopping over the discarded items, not one of them paid the slightest attention to the mess. All of them knew that this would be the last time that any of them would set foot in this room.
They jostled one another, stumbling amidst the confusion. Yet, though the ready room was packed with bodies, it seemed almost as though each pilot stood alone, lost in their own thoughts, solitary even amidst the crush of their fellows.
Mikasa moved as though dreaming, attaching her blaster, vibroknife, comlink, and emergency beacon to her belt with almost mechanical care.
On the other side of Armin's row of lockers, Reiner cursed softly as he dropped his flight helmet on the ready room floor with a clatter. He bent halfway to the ground to retrieve it before he realized that Connie had already picked it up and handed it back towards him.
Yet every so often, someone would seem to suddenly remember that they were standing shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow pilots, and they would break out of their reverie, cracking a joke laced with gallows humor, exchanging muttered fragments of conversation, or in some other small way acknowledging the friend or comrade at their side.
"Hannah, listen to me."
Hannah was shaking as she checked the life support unit sitting on her chest, when Franz reached out placed a hand on her shoulder to reassure her. "We'll make it through this." His voice rang with confidence, but something in his eyes betrayed his own worries.
On the other side of the room, some of the most seasoned veterans of the squadron went about their standard pre-battle rituals. Brow creased with concentration, Hanji was staring at her datapad, tabbing rapidly through the pages of the same Imperial Navy manual on starfighter tactics that she had read front-to-back nineteen times before. Meanwhile, Gunther Schultz solemnly walked between Erd, Auruo, Levi, Erwin, and Petra and shook hands with each of them. Commander Erwin and Mike Zacharius, however, went through their preparations professionally and without fanfare, their faces grim.
For his part, Armin himself had begun to become accustomed to the terrible chaos of the hours and minutes before imminent combat. His fingers weren't trembling as they had been before his first battle, but they still felt cold and numb as he fumbled to close the fastenings of his pilot's harness.
"Hey Armin, are you all right?"
Eren had appeared at Armin's shoulder. The hair above his brow was damp with sweat, but otherwise, Eren Jeager appeared calm and ready. His green eyes, however, were narrowed with concern at his friend.
"I'm fine!" Armin exclaimed, finally managing to clip his insulated flight pants to his equipment belt. "It's just that…"
His voice trailed off. Armin's body was going through the familiar motions, checking the vacuum seals of his suit at the ankles, waist, and wrists, but his mind was racing as it imagined how the upcoming battle would unfold. Finally, he organized his thoughts and spoke, "We've raised the planetary shield… and that forces the Empire to launch a full assault directly on the shield generator itself." He looked up into Eren's face. "They're going to select the one option for an attack that we're not prepared to effectively resist—and we don't have the heavy weapons to stop them."
If the defenses failed to hold, it would be a miracle if they evacuated everyone in time. The most important equipment and personnel would be evacuated on the first transports. That in turn meant that the Alliance soldiers least likely to escape the planet alive were precisely those tasked to defend it—the infantrymen, the pilots, the artillery gunners, and the wounded from all the combat branches.
As if on cue, the base loudspeaker came alive a second time. This time, instead of General Rieekan's gruff, professional tone, the voice that spoke was the fiery bark of General Pixis, the commander of the base defenses at Perimeter Rose.
"Attention all base personnel! Imperial landing forces have been detected inbound at Perimeter Maria. All forces—prepare for ground assault!"
The broadcast ended, and the pilots immediately returned their attention to the task at hand, making their final preparations with redoubled haste. Eren, however, paused for a moment and gave Armin a broad smile. "We'll be fine. The Imperials won't be expecting Commander Skywalker's new tactics. We'll take care of their hovertanks, and our forces on the ground will cut their infantry into ground meat!"
Armin wasn't sure. The rebels' lack of heavy ordnance forced them to rely on a delicate combined-arms force for defense of the base. Any complications—communications jamming, maybe, or the neutralization of any one component of their forces—could compromise the integrity of the entire fortified line… Still, this was their Rebellion, and they had neither asked for nor expected an easy fight. And this was not the time for second thoughts. Armin nodded at his friend and gave him a grin in return.
Christa was the first to leave fully dressed for the hangars. Moments later, Ymir stuffed her comlink, blaster, and her remaining tools into her helmet as though it were a basket, thrust the whole collection under one arm, and raced after her. Commander Erwin and the rest of the Special Operations flight were the next to leave, marching through the ready room door as one. As he passed through the doorway last, Captain Levi turned over one shoulder and hissed, "Hurry up, you brats!"
Sasha followed them out the door, joined a minute later by Reiner and Mina. Then it was Armin's turn. His locker empty, he straightened, feeling his pilot's harness stretch across his chest.
Next to him, Eren was still pulling his flight boots on. Mikasa, looking fully prepared to climb straight into her airspeeder, stood over him impatiently with crossed arms.
"Eren…" she began.
"Just give me a moment!"
Seeing that his childhood friend was still a good deal away from full flight readiness, Armin decided to wait for Eren and Mikasa outside. Before he left, however, he took one last look down the front of his uniform and performed a final check. His harness and seals checked out, as did the blinking lights on his life support unit. His blaster, never once used in anger, sat in its holster at his right hip.
It was a familiar, comfortable uniform—the same flight suit that he had worn since his first mission. Below the tag with his name fastened to the uniform's left breast, he could see the rough threads where his lieutenant's insignia had been sewn over the previous rank badges. A terrible thought occurred to Armin at that moment, and a cold shiver ran through his arms right down to his fingertips.
Are these the clothes that I will die wearing?
The butterflies fluttering in Armin's stomach seemed to catch fire, consuming his insides with a sudden, sharp nausea. Immediately, Armin turned away from his squadron mates. Hoping that nobody had noticed his outbreak of nerves, he clambered towards the doorway to make his escape. He excused himself hoarsely as he pushed past Hannah, Bertholt, and Connie, then made his escape from the ready room.
His boots stepped from tiled floor plating onto the soft carpet of the junior pilot officers' lounge as the door hissed shut behind him.
The lounge—the same lounge that Armin and his squadron-mates had spent dozens of afternoons and evenings in—was eerily empty. Nobody was sprawled out over the sofas and hoverchairs with a cup of caf in one hand in a datapad in the other. Nobody was being demolished at holochess at the game table by Commander Erwin, who played with his eyes closed and had an undefeated record stretching back three years. As for the sound of laughter and banter—they too were freshly absent this place, leaving it as lifeless as a museum exhibit.
Armin's gaze rested on the small, raised section of floor at the room's center, occupied by a few armchairs and a low table. The Commander had stood right there, the previous night, when he had arrived to announce the fateful news.
Had it really been just nine hours ago that they had all been seated here without a care in the world?
With one last look at the unoccupied chairs and tables in the center of the room, Armin strode through the doors into the cold corridor beyond.
OOOOO
Thanks for reading! As always, please leave a review, and don't forget to favorite and follow!
As you may or may not have noticed, in addition to my Shingeki no Kyojin mania I'm also an avid Star Wars fan as well as somewhat of an aviation buff, so apologies for all of the references and technological jargon that have managed to slip into this work.
Before anyone asks me, I think I'll go ahead and state up front that none of the characters from the Shingeki no Kyojin universe here are going to be revealed to be Force-sensitive. You can imagine this person or that person having latent Force sensitivity all you want if that's what you like, but it won't show up in this fic.
I have to say that writing has been a load of fun so far. Imagining the ways in which our beloved Shingeki no Kyojin characters end up rubbing shoulders with the great heroes of the Star Wars galaxy is truly wonderful to plan out.
It's also been somewhat of a challenge though. Most of my stories so far have had fairly small central casts, which has made it easier to give the characters plenty of 'screen time', so to speak. With such a large scale setting this time around, I'm doing my best to make sure that everyone gets some attention. It's a lot of careful work, though!
And yes, I've taken the liberty of assigning last names to Hannah, Dazz, and Franz.
Anyway, thanks again for reading, and stay tuned for more!