Flaming Water, Frozen Earth

by MariaRoseSina

A serious Star Wars/Shingeki no Kyojin crossover! The Rebellion is besieged on all sides by the Galactic Empire, but its recent victories have given the Alliance new hope and resolve. Armin Arlert is a flight leader in Green Squadron, the Scouting Corps' elite snowspeeder strike group. Mostly Armin-centric, but there will be significant POV chapters with other characters.

7. Flaming Water, Frozen Earth: Chapter 7

Flaming Water, Frozen Earth

Chapter Seven

-DOCUMENT START-

INFORMATION AVAILABLE FOR PUBLIC DISCLOSURE:

DOCUMENT#: AAA43991

ALLIANCE GRAND MEMORIAL LIBRARY, CORUSCANT

MEDAL CITATION

AWARDED ON THE GALACTIC STANDARD CALENDAR DATE 38:12:28

BY THE RECOMMENDATION OF

COLONEL RICO L. BRZENSKA

44TH INFANTRY DIVISION, ALLIANCE ARMY.

for gallantry and heroism in combat against ground and mechanized forces of the Galactic Imperial Navy and Army above and upon the surface of the planetoid HOTH in the HOTH SYSTEM between 0900 HOURS and 1600 HOURS on the Galactic Standard Calendar Date 38:6:7.

Tasked with covering the evacuation of ECHO BASE by assisting defending ground forces from the air alongside her combat airspeeder squadron, FLIGHT LIEUTENANT MIKASA ACKERMANN repeatedly exposed her aircraft to withering anti-aircraft blaster cannon and concussion missile fire in her unhesitating pursuit of the mission objective, placing the lives of her fellow soldiers on the surface and in the air above her own safety. Displaying exemplary piloting skill, FLT. LT. ACKERMANN was directly responsible for the destruction of no less than five All-Terrain Scout-Transports, while inflicting heavy casualties upon attacking Imperial infantry units with pinpoint blaster cannon fire.

During high-speed evasive maneuvering with the goal of evading an incoming missile, FLT. LT. ACKERMANN was forced to crash-land her airspeeder upon the open terrain between friendly and enemy ground forces. Despite moderate injuries sustained in the crash, she coolly and methodically followed Alliance counter-intelligence protocols to the letter, supervising the data wipe and destruction of sensitive materials in her aircraft's databanks. Upon the approach of nearby Imperial troops, she assisted her co-pilot, FLIGHT OFFICER EREN JEAGER in repelling the enemy with small-arms fire until preparations had been completed.

When she realized that incoming enemy fire had become too intense for friendly forces to safely extract her and FLT. OFF. JEAGER from the battlefield, FLT. LT. ACKERMANN insisted that Alliance troops cease all efforts to recover them in order to minimize the risk to others. When Alliance soldiers withdrew at her urging, FLT. LT. ACKERMANN was last seen alive while under heavy small-arms fire, engaging several dozen oncoming Imperial snowtroopers with her standard-issue blaster pistol from behind the cover of her wrecked vehicle.

Her indomitable bravery, exemplary fighting spirit, and devotion to her comrades and to the Alliance's cause are in keeping with the highest traditions of the Alliance Starfighter Corps, and it is on the behalf of the entire Alliance to Restore the Republic that we are honored and humbled to present

FLIGHT LIEUTENANT MIKASA ACKERMANN

OF THE

57TH SCOUTING CORPS TACTICAL AIR SQUADRON

WITH THE POSTHUMOUS AWARD OF THE

KALIDOR CRESCENT, FIRST CLASS

-END OF DOCUMENT—

OOOOO

He was a young soldier—tall, with a thin, handsome face and brown hair that tumbled messily over his pale forehead. He sat against the wall with his hands resting over one another in his lap. His eyes were closed, but his expression looked stern, his mouth brow set in a slight frown.

It took them a couple seconds to notice the thumbnail-sized shrapnel wound just above the youth's right temple. The attending medic must have mopped away what little blood had flowed before moving on to his next patient.

Armin read the name and rank tag sewn into the fallen infantryman's parka over his right breast.

SPC. CHURCH, F.

Armin bowed his head for a moment in respect. Then, wasting no further time, he reached forward and removed the thermal detonator, heated canteen, smoke grenade, and spare blaster pistol power packs from the young man's equipment belt and bandolier. The soldier's uniform cloth was still damp to the touch from melted snow.

"We should hurry," Armin told the others as he rose to his feet. As though to punctuate his words, the walls around them shuddered lightly as yet another salvo of turbolasers from the orbiting Imperial fleet pummeled the surface above them.

They moved on at a fast walk, their blaster pistols at the ready.

If Armin had thought of the corridors of Echo Base as gloomy and claustrophobic before, then the Imperial attack had changed them for the worse. Droplets of freezing water fell from cracks in the walls and ceilings created by the Imperial bombardment above, while chunks of dislodged ice littered corners and passageways. The entire facility seemed to be running on reserve power, with the interior lit only by intermittent emergency lamps. Equipment and supplies had been scattered across the floors of the hallways, presumably by Alliance personnel searching the once-neatly stacked stores for any materiel and goods worth evacuating.

In addition, the neat clumps of bodies and the dozens of blaster scars across seemingly every wall had answered Armin's question as to which side currently controlled this part of the base. Looking at the knots of fallen Alliance soldiers crowding the corridors interspersed here and there by motionless suits of white snowtrooper armor, it was clear that Imperial troops had already taken this sector and pushed on further ahead. Indeed, their ears could detect occasional furious bursts of faint shouting and blaster fire in the distance ahead, to either side, and even behind them.

"Where do we go now?" Mina wondered aloud, slowing as they arrived at a four-way intersection between two large corridors. Medical supplies littered the floor around them, and the patches of blood freezing upon the floor indicated that this crossroads had been employed as a makeshift aid station just minutes or hours ago.

There was so much evidence of recent fighting all around them, yet since they had entered the base, they hadn't encountered a single living soul. Granted, they had deliberately chosen the narrowest, least-conspicuous passages to shake off the squad of Imperials pursuing them, but…

Armin weighed their options. They could take the most direct path to the starfighter hangers, gambling that they wouldn't run into the Imperial assault forces. Or, they could move deeper into the base, along a path that was more likely to still be under friendly control…

"We should head north," he mused, "into the center of the base… then east to the hangars…"

He nodded at his own reasoning. This way, if the starfighter hangars had already been captured by the Empire, they would still have a slim chance of evacuating via transport with the Alliance forces still holding out in the heart of Echo Base.

He checked the charge of the power pack fitted to his light blaster pistol out of nervousness before remembering that he had already checked it twice since they'd entered the base.

"Shouldn't we try and raise some friendlies on our comlinks?" Thomas asked quietly.

"Jammed." Mina responded, snorting in frustration. "They're probably intercepting any transmissions we try to make too. Electrocomputing Warfare Division needs to get its act together about these kinds of things."

"This way," Armin said, indicating the passage in question. "Follow me. Check your corners."

Armin had never felt more conspicuous in his orange flight suit as they stepped gingerly over the debris strewn around their feet. Clad from his shoulders to his toes in the bright synthetic garment, he imagined the kind of walking target that he would present to an Imperial soldier in a firefight.

He led the other two pilots as they hurried deeper into the base. The light blaster in his gloved hands felt clumsy and unfamiliar as he pointed it towards each corner and doorway they stepped towards.

"Are you doing all right, Thomas?" Mina suddenly asked.

Armin glanced over his shoulder and saw that Thomas was clutching a hand to his face as though in pain, his blaster lowered at his side as he stumbled after them

"I didn't react quickly enough. I didn't even realize there were missiles in the air already…" Thomas murmured, his voice trailing off. His hand moved, and Armin saw the deep lines of sorrow drawn across his forehead and around his eyes.

"It surprised everyone," remarked Mina sympathetically. "There was nothing you could have done."

The words were empty. All three of them knew that. All of them, even the inexperienced Thomas, had heard similar phrases across their time with the Alliance. They'd all welcomed comrades returning from missions; they'd all seen soldiers, pilots, and crewmen bowed in grief, their comrades struggling to comfort them with words that never quite seemed to suffice.

Armin thought of Connie and Sasha, and he felt something inside him harden and curl up defensively as he recalled how they had died. No, he reflected mournfully. The sense of guilt would never completely leave Thomas.

His mind drifted, and Mikasa and Eren's faces materialized before his consciousness. He wondered if they had already made it to a transport. Were they lifting off from Hoth's surface right now, peering back through the viewports as Echo Base burned behind them? Would they make it past the blockading fleet? Maybe one of them had been wounded in the withdrawal, and the other was now standing worriedly beside them in a medical bay somewhere as they left the planet's gravity well… Or maybe…

He wanted to believe that he would see them again, but at the same time, a fatalistic voice deep inside him was reminding him of other possible futures, warning him sternly against that hope.

Just then, Armin's ears picked up peculiar sounds from around the next corner, and he waved the other two to a rapid halt. He rested his back against the wall and raised his blaster, his heart beginning to pound faster and faster.

There was no doubt about it. As he listened, he could hear it—the sounds of footsteps and low voices, of containers being opened and large objects being moved.

He edged up as close as he dared to where the wall ended, already knowing what lay in the adjacent hall. After all, any Alliance soldiers would be moving frantically, rushing towards the evacuation points. His finger resting on the trigger of his blaster pistol, every muscle in his body primed for action, he mustered up his courage and peered around the corner.

Up ahead, the corridor was packed with Imperial uniforms.

Several stretchers lay against one wall, occupied by injured soldiers whose white armor had been pierced and blackened by blaster fire. Three Imperial snowtroopers carrying medical equipment moved back and forth among them, crouching to administer treatment to the wounded. At the other end of the hallway, another two troopers stood guard with their back turned towards Armin, long blaster rifles couched in their arms.

Armin's glance flickered once again to the wounded men stretched out across the ground, and he felt his eyes widen.

Several of the Imperial casualties had removed their helmets, and for the first time, Armin found himself looking his enemy in the face.

They were human. Not clones, or droids, as some whispered or jeered, but men—men with faces, eyes, even emotions.

The only difference between these troopers and Alliance soldiers was that each of the injured men wore their hair extremely close-shaven. Otherwise, their faces were pale and contorted with the same pain, their expressions just as full of the same worry and fear. They nursed their injuries with the same ginger movements, groaning with the same discomfort as they shifted upon their stretchers.

As Armin watched, the hallway shook as the Imperial bombardment rocked the ground once again, and one of the wounded soldiers cracked a joke, drawing several laughs from the medics and from his fellow casualties.

A hand on Armin's shoulder made him jump in surprise, and Armin turned to see Mina looking at him, her expression questioning and uneasy. She nudged him again, her eyes asking without words whether he was planning to attack, or withdraw to find another way around.

Armin looked back at her and thinned in his lips. His hands trembling, he checked the charge on his blaster a fourth time.

Then, he heard the rhythmic, crunching impacts against the ground—a soft, rapid martial tattoo that rang across the floorplates, punctuated by the staccato of fragments of ice as they were crushed underfoot.

Boots behind them.

Armin did not hesitate. He did not think twice as he stepped around the corner, placed one of the Imperial medics in his sights, and pulled the trigger of his blaster pistol.

A scream. A crumpling white-armored doll. Five heads resting against the ground whirled to look at him, staring in fear at him with five pairs of terrified eyes. A faceless helmet swiveled to face him as well, and he aimed and fired two more shots, sending another Imperial medic falling to the floor.

He felt a shadow pass behind him, and suddenly Mina's blaster was barking alongside his, their weapons filling the corridor with a duet of crimson energy.

The third medic fell, caught in the crossfire. He had not even been their target. Mina and Armin directed their fire at the two armed troopers standing furthest down the hall, their blaster bolts punching ugly black scars into the snowtroopers' body armor.

Shouting echoed around him, fading in and out amongst the shriek of blasters. Voices Armin didn't know cried out behind and in front of him, calling out in surprise, yelling in fear and anger.

Three of the wounded men on the ground scrambled to reach for the blaster pistols at their belts. Another lunged out of his stretcher, reaching for the blaster rifle that one of the two sentries had dropped. Armin turned his blaster pistol on them, looking down the sights at five faces disfigured with terror and hatred.

At that instant, it occurred to Armin that the wounded troopers had not even attempted to surrender. Perhaps the Empire had horrified them with stories of barbaric rebel soldiers who tortured prisoners and executed the injured, fighting ruthlessly and without mercy.

He had never dreamed that he would live up to the worst of Imperial propaganda.

With a pang of shame, Armin turned his blaster on the men in the stretchers, cutting them down one after another. The last wounded soldier was on his knees, raising the blaster rifle he had retrieved, when he suddenly collapsed before Armin could whirl to aim at him.

Thomas stepped past Armin, his smoking blaster pistol still trained on the man that had just died.

At that moment, Imperial troops appeared in the hallway behind them, and Armin opened his mouth, bellowing with an inhuman roar.

"Let's go!"

They ran, sprinting as fast as their tired legs could carry them, leaping awkwardly over the ten corpses sprawled across the corridor.

Their gunfire seemed to have ignited an inferno of Imperial activity. Suddenly, shouts echoed from seemingly all around them. Once, an Imperial soldier emerged from a doorway directly ahead, so close that his falling body had knocked Armin in the shoulder as they shot him and dashed past.

In a way, their pell-mell flight was a welcome relief from the earlier quiet and tension. Panting with the effort of running, they could yell out warnings to one another at the top of their lungs without regard for subtlety or stealth. At the same time, Armin was rapidly becoming aware of just how dangerous their situation had just become. It seemed as though hundreds of Imperial soldiers were materializing out of nowhere all around them.

"Left! Cut left now!" Armin cried as a squad of snowtroopers appeared in the passage ahead. They swerved into a side corridor as incoming blaster bolts whipped past them, sparking and flashing as they hit the walls.

"Watch your step!" Mina warned as they darted across a patch of floor slick with a pool of freezing water.

Bolts of deadly energy flew past them again as the troopers followed them into the hallway. Armin and the others pointed their blasters behind them, firing wildly back at the enemy as they sprinted.

Armin's sense of panic grew as they rounded another corner. One wrong turn or poor decision, and the three of them would be finished. Where were the other Alliance soldiers?

Doorways and signs flashed past them. Storeroom. Armory. Barracks. Generator room. Armin had navigated this exact route a hundred times before. However, in the half-darkness, with the corridors cluttered with a mess of debris and abandoned equipment, everything looked unfamiliar at first glance…

They emerged into another long passageway, this one wider and more brightly lit, and Armin's heart leapt as he recognized where they were.

"This way!" he shouted, turning right and leading them headlong down the hallway. He quickened his pace, ducking as he ran through a stream of icy water pouring from a fissure in the ceiling.

A flash—brief and bright yellow-red—illuminated the walls on either side of him. Armin blinked as an instant later, another flash brightened the hallway with reflected light. More blasters echoed behind them, and two crimson beams shot just past his right shoulder, vaporizing ice and metal alike where they landed.

Armin flinched. He ducked again, this time to make himself a smaller target. His flight helmet slipped forward slightly with the motion, and he lifted his head slightly to look down the path ahead of them as he accelerated again, his boots pounding against the floorplates.

Yet another blaster bolt shot past him, striking a light fixture and extinguishing it, and suddenly, fierce terror gripped him as Armin realized something about the passageway they were fleeing down.

This stretch of corridor was longer and straighter, with no exits for a length of twenty yards.

The walls flashed blood red all around him, and suddenly Armin caught a trace of a scent vaguely like burning plastic. Armin saw something falling out of the corner of his eye as a pained scream followed the sound of the last blaster shots. He heard a loud gasp from Mina as something heavy landed upon the ground just a few steps behind him.

Armin spun, almost losing his balance in his haste to turn around, and his heart froze.

"Goddamnit!" Thomas spat, half-cursing, half-groaning as he lay sprawled across the floor ten paces behind them, his face clenched in agony. One leg trailed behind his body, a gaping hole burned into the orange material of his flight suit just behind the knee. Armin could see a thin tongue of smoke curl from the blackened opening as Thomas shifted, trying to pull himself up onto his hands and knees.

"Thomas!" Mina cried. She had run on past Armin, but now she stopped in her tracks and turned, staring in horror at their squadron mate. A look of desperation appeared in her expression as her gaze lifted to look down the hall in the direction in which they'd come, and she opened her mouth to yell something. Just as she was raising her sidearm, a blaster bolt struck her squarely in the face.

Thomas cried out again, this time in disbelief.

Armin's mind seemed to go utterly blank. His eyes widened as he watched Mina drop to the ground where she stood, her body already lifeless as she slumped across the floorplates without a sound.

Behind them, Armin saw white-armored soldiers filling the hallway, advancing towards them steadily, pausing only to contribute to the storm of blaster fire filling the air. Deadly energy sizzled just past his nose, and Armin stumbled backwards, stepping more by accident than by intent into the shelter of the first doorway carved out of the wall behind him.

Thomas was moving, a strangled howl escaping from his lungs as he threw himself forwards across the ground, pulling himself behind a toppled stack of supply boxes lying against the wall. A barrage of blaster bolts followed him, exploding in flame against the containers and sending several tumbling across the ground. One crate opened as it fell, a collection of Alliance infantry uniforms spilling out onto the floor.

Armin edged out of the alcove as far as he dared, watching Thomas struggle to crawl further behind cover as a constant stream of angry red beams flew around him. Armin's gaze drifted to where Mina lay on her back, a terrible wound gaping across the upper half of her head.

Bile rose in his throat as his mind rebelled furiously against what he was seeing, refusing to accept the callousness, the injustice of the sight before him. He felt like screaming in anguish at whatever celestial powers controlled life and death. Who in the wide galaxy deserved to die like that?

Why?

Why couldn't he save anyone? Why couldn't he save even a single fellow pilot?

He remembered the thoughts that had passed through his head when he had learned of the loss of Aldaraan, and once again, he felt a bitter voice inside himself proclaim that there was no such thing as the Force. There could not be. At the very least, there could not be any Force other than the great powers of darkness that the Sith wielded…

Part of him wanted to run, screaming in bloodlust, straight at the enemy with his blaster blazing, to avenge Mina, Connie, Sasha, Bertholt, and all the others or die trying… but yet another part of him just wanted to give in to his despair—to fall, as lifeless as Mina's corpse, to the floor and relinquish all further efforts to resist the cruel fate that he had found himself caught within.

The rational part of his mind, however, whirred as he looked to where Thomas lay, huddled as best as he could behind the shelter of the supply cartons as blaster fire filled the air between him and Armin. Armin gritted his teeth, armed with a fresh, desperate resolve. He peeked out briefly at the Imperial soldiers advancing down the hall and firing from the shoulder as they closed the distance to Thomas's hiding place.

He would throw a smoke grenade down the hallway and fire a sequence of shots to force the snowtroopers behind cover. Then, he would dash over to Thomas, wrap the other flier's arm over his shoulders, and—

Pulling himself into a sitting position with his back braced against the pile of containers, Thomas looked up at Armin and met his eyes. The blond youth shook his head ruefully and grimaced, his eyes gleaming with an odd light.

"What a war…" Armin heard him mutter beneath the deafening peal of blaster rifles.

Then he saw Thomas, wincing in pain, produce a thermal detonator from his equipment belt and arm it. As the spherical device came to life with a shimmering sequence of blinking warning indicators, the wounded pilot simply closed his eyes and lowered his head to his chest.

Death. At that moment, Armin realized that he had watched so many of his friends die on this day that it had ceased even to surprise him. This time, he was watching Thomas dying right in front of him, yet still he was powerless, forced to be nothing more than a witness. His left hand clenched into a gloved fist, and part of him wanted to rush forward anyway, annihilating himself as well in the brilliant explosion that would claim Thomas's life.

This wasn't fair… This just wasn't fair…

Feeling worse than a coward, worse than useless, he backed slowly further into the doorway behind him. Out there in the corridor, Thomas's face and torso slipped out of view behind the corner, leaving only his legs visible to Armin. Then, Armin steeled his heart and turned to dash through the threshold into the darkness of the side passage.

He felt soulless and empty as he plunged deeper and deeper into the dim hallway, listening to the pitch of the blaster fire behind him change as the distance behind him grew, the walls altering the acoustic echo as the Imperials continued shooting.

Behind him, he heard a earthshattering roar that announced the activation of Thomas's thermal detonator.

That was when Armin remembered that he had even forgotten to say goodbye.

A tidal wave of guilt seemed to fall, crashing upon his soul. Armin ran on, alone, hating himself. What kind of a person was he? If he escaped, how could he face Eren, Mikasa, and the other survivors of the squadron and tell them that Mina, Dazz, and Thomas were all dead? Why was he still able to run, to hide, to fight on after half of his closest friends had died today? Why hadn't he fallen to his knees yet to weep at the loss of so many… so many good people?

Why, indeed, was he still alive?

OOOOO

Out of the darkness in front of him loomed two shadows lying across the floor, their outline and weight unmistakably those of dead bodies.

As Armin neared the first of the two limp forms, he noticed a head of black hair and the body's stern, serious features and realized that he recognized this dead man.

It was the Interior Security Brigade special operations soldier, Lieutenant Marlow Sanders. He lay on his back just next to the wall, his eyes closed and his hands folded over the gaping blaster wounds across his chest. From the position of his body and from the thin trail of blood across the floor, it looked as though a comrade had dragged him there to treat him, only to realize that he had already expired.

The other body was a woman with wavy, shoulder-length brown hair, clad in the same all-black infantry uniform. She had fallen face forwards across the ground, a gruesome opening carved out of the side of her head from a blaster shot delivered at close range. A blaster pistol lay just inches from her fingertips. Her eyes, too, were closed, but her expression remained contorted with a look of total desperation.

Armin wondered briefly if she had shot herself with the intent of avoiding Imperial capture, or if her despair at losing her friend had simply overcome her will to fight on.

He ran on.

OOOOO

MAJOR MITABI'S BOYS—THE UNCONQUERABLE 55TH!

LONG LIVE THE ALLIANCE! CORELLIA BOWS TO NO EMPEROR!

ROGUE SQUADRON WILL BE BACK! FREEDOM OR DEATH!

The graffiti appeared every few dozen feet, sprayed or scrawled in messily slanted lines over doorways or across empty sections of wall. Cartoonish mascots, unit insignia, and Alliance crests bracketed the painted text, decorating the edges of the blocks of lettering.

The custom of covering the interior of soon-to-be-abandoned bases with battle slogans and taunts to infuriate arriving Imperial troops dated back decades—so long that few if any could remember when or where the practice had begun.

VICTORY WILL BE OURS!

Armin had to squint to make out the words as he ran past them in the darkness. Due to the moisture clinging to the walls, the red paint had never dried. The color dripped towards the floor in thin trails, as though emblematic of the blood cost of bringing that declaration closer to reality.

Now, the halls no longer shook from the orbital bombardment alone. Muffled explosions shivered through the walls as Imperial and Alliance troops battled from room to room on the floor above him, blasting away one another with explosive charges and thermal detonators.

Armin checked his chronometer. The time was 1640 hours. He had to hurry.

He forced himself to keep running, stumbling down the dark hallway as his breath came in belabored gulps. Fatigue fought viciously to drag him down to the floor, and his gut twisted with a painful stitch from the prolonged jogging, yet he pulled himself along, cursing under his breath at his own physical weakness.

He could not die.

He was an Alliance soldier, a valuable combat pilot. He, Armin Arlert, was the acting commander of the 57th Scouting Corps Tactical Air Squadron.

He was a son of Aldaraan, and the war that had claimed his homeworld was not yet over. He had sworn an oath—an oath that had bound his life in the service of the Alliance, and the Alliance had not yet released him from his duty.

He'd promised Eren and Mikasa that he would see them again… he'd promised Jean too… and Mina—Mina had wanted him to have a certain conversation…

He had never felt so tired. Every muscle in his body ached, begging him to give in to the pain, to collapse to the ground and curl up in a doorway to sleep. The flight suit seemed to resist each step he took. He could smell his own cold sweat, accompanied by the faint scent of dried blood from the shrapnel cuts on his cheek and neck.

Yet he did not stop. A part of his spirit stressed the need for haste, the necessity of escape. Another part of him kept his body moving out of fear alone—a gnawing fear that if he stopped, the day's experiences would catch up with him, forcing him to relive all the terrible horrors that had happened just hours and minutes ago…

Keeping an eye on the compass indicator glowing around the edge of his chronometer display, Armin forced himself forward.

OOOOO

The closer he had moved towards the center of the base, the more he had found himself having to slow down to avoid encountering the enemy. Eventually, his progress had slowed to a crawl as the proximity to danger demanded that he move in short bounds, pausing to listen for movement every few meters. Surrounded by the shouting of Imperial soldiers, shaken by the earth's trembling as turbolaser blasts and grenade detonations rocked the base, he had thrown himself into whichever passageways had looked darkest and most deserted, and whenever the shadows of enemy troopers had crossed his path, he had clung to the nearest wall, the fingers of his right hand wrapped tightly around the grip of his blaster pistol.

Finally, he had diverted to the floor below, hoping to find a shortcut.

The lower maintenance level of the base was cloaked in darkness, its narrow corridors disorganized and cluttered with piping and wiring that protruded from the walls and ceilings. The floorplan seemed organized at random, and Armin kept a careful eye on his compass tool to avoid losing himself inside the maze of equipment rooms and passageways. As he had hoped, however, this deeper section of the base seemed almost completely unmarked by fighting. Apart from the occasional tremor from the floor above, his footsteps and of his own soft breathing were the only sounds that reached his ears down here.

He pushed onward, feeling his heart lifting with growing hope. This floor was empty! He couldn't hear or see a single sign of another living person on this level, Alliance or Imperial.

Armin had ventured down to the machinery level a handful of times before—three or four times on squadron business, and twice to stop Connie from trying to cut the heat supply to the senior pilot officers' quarters. Now, the hum of furnaces and the whisper of water through pipes was absent, the pumps, boilers, and engines behind the closed machine room doors quiet and unmoving. He could already feel the air on his exposed skin cooling, as what little ambient heat remained bled away into the icy walls.

Abruptly, Armin slowed to a stop, staring down a side corridor in sudden shock.

He had walked down this hallway before… but he was certain that there had never been a door at the other end of that side passage. Indeed, a sign placed on the wall near the corner indicated that the corridor terminated in a dead end. Every time he had glanced down that way, he had only seen a blank wall, half-hidden behind a stack of machine parts.

Now, the jumble of parts had been pushed aside, and a thin section of the wall itself had slid half-open, spilling golden light out into the passage.

Armin turned to face down the side corridor before taking a few hesitant steps forward.

A secret door, isolated on an infrequently-traveled lower floor…

A voice inside Armin's mind reminded him that this was not a mission that he had been assigned, and that somebody else, in all likelihood, had already been ordered to deal with whatever was sitting behind that door. At this stage of the battle, chances were that a special team had already come and gone, destroying or removing everything of importance. The Alliance was an experienced guerilla organization, accustomed to relocating on emergency notice… High Command couldn't possibly have overlooked anything dangerous enough to threaten the movement if captured.

Whatever lay hidden inside that facility was undoubtedly of the most critical importance to the Alliance.

He broke into a run down the corridor, his eyes fixated on that distant door. He would be quick. He would just peek inside, verify that everything had been taken care of…

As he reached the opening, Armin realized that another set of open doors lay just inside the entrance. The outer entry was just wide enough to admit him in his bulky flight suit, and he pushed himself through, placing a hand against the cool metal as his other hand held his blaster at the ready. He blinked as he stepped cautiously through the second pair of doors into the light beyond, his vision momentarily fading as his eyes adjusted painfully to the brightness.

His sight returned.

The room was octagonally-shaped, filled with workstations built around circular banks of communications consoles and data terminals. Opposite from the point at which Armin had entered, another set of doors stood, closed and locked. Eight massive memory library modules stood along each wall, each stretching from the floor fully to the ceiling, and in the room's center sat a quantum computer half the size of Armin's T-47 snowspeeder.

Spinning where he stood, Armin took in his surroundings from wall to wall, thoughts racing through his head like snowflakes in a blizzard. This location was too isolated to serve as a secondary command center or communications hub. The room's layout suggested a highly collaborative work environment, rather than the structured hierarchy that would be expected of any sort of Alliance agency or department headquarters. Lastly, of all the possibilities, only one possible application required this much data storage and computing power.

Not a single sign adorned the chamber, but its purpose was as clear as day.

This was Alliance Cryptology and Cryptanalysis. The home base of both Alliance Intelligence's code-breaking operations as well as its efforts to invent and improve new ciphers for the group's own use in communications.

The room looked as though it had not been touched.

His heart beating faster, Armin felt his eyes widen. He looked around the room a second time, looking for evidence that friendly soldiers had worked to deny its secrets to the Empire—electromagnetic data scramblers, perhaps, or even crude demolition charges placed at every console. He saw nothing. Rather, lights still blinked across the terminals, indicating that they were merely idling, ready for use, their priceless data completely intact.

Then, Armin's gaze finally landed upon a detail that he had failed to notice up until that moment.

Standing over one of the terminals was a waiflike girl with blond hair tied back behind her ears in a bun, dressed in an ink-black commando uniform.

Armin froze in astonishment, a sudden, dizzy feeling overpowering him as he gaped at her.

"Annie?"

OOOOO

Annie reacted near-instantaneously at the sound of his voice. Her head snapped to look in his direction as her body straightened faster than lightning, her hand already clawing her blaster pistol clear from her belt holster. She brought the weapon's barrel to bear on him in a single motion, her expression wild with fear and a focused determination.

For a heartbeat, Armin found himself staring straight into Annie's eyes.

Blue.

Blue, like pale sea ice, viewed through a dark slice of arctic ocean.

He did not feel himself fall. Only when the impact with the ground sent a sharp pain through his entire body did he feel a separate, burning agony in his chest and realize that Annie had shot him.

He heard himself cry out as the combined shock hit him. In that moment, he was unsure which hurt more—for right beside the smoldering wound in his chest, an anguish of a different kind had utterly obliterated his heart.

A hundred thorns. A thousand piercing blades filled the empty void the lost organ had left behind, and Armin realized that he had not cried out from the physical pain alone.

His shoulder hit the ground next, and he sensed rather than felt his flight helmet leave his head before rolling soundlessly across the floor.

The pain was incredible. Every nerve in his torso felt as though it was afire, but Armin did not yell out. Rather, his mind focused with horror on his fluttering, fluctuating awareness… on the twisting, wrenching sensation in his breast. He felt as though energy was pouring away from his body out onto the floor of the chamber—a feeling that he dreaded, a feeling that compelled him with every iota of his exhausted strength to resist and fight.

This… this couldn't be the end…

He seemed to feel and sense everything as he lay there. He could smell his own blood and the horrifying scent of his ruined flesh. He could perceive the cool touch of steel floorplates beneath his cheek. Above all other sensations, he felt his soul twisting as though transfixed with invisible arrows. He saw his vision swimming as his eyes filled with tears, and he felt a terrible, helpless expression seize the features of his face as he struggled to look up at the girl standing above him…

His friend… His…

"Annie, why…?"

The words had escaped from his lips without any conscious effort. He blinked, his eyes heavy, and his vision briefly cleared before more budding tears replaced those now rolling down his cheeks.

He felt the wetness on his cheek, and a part of him marveled at the contrast of that feeling with his sensation of the pool of warm blood spreading beneath him.

Summoning up his draining strength, he lifted his head for a moment to look up at Annie.

Before the end, he had wanted to look into her eyes, to search for any difference between the person standing before him and the friend he had known. He could see her thoughts written across her eyes. Her surprise was fading, replaced by pity and regret as she watched him, observing how, even now, he still was pretending that he did not know… that he did not understand… who she really was and why she was doing what she was doing.

Yet, as Armin stared up into her pale face, he could see only the same familiar Annie behind those blue pupils. Even squinting through bleary tears, he could see that, from the beginning, Annie had never worn a mask at all.

But if that was true, how could she bring herself to do something like this? How could she be an Imperial agent?

Behind her, he could see a small data drive plugged into a terminal, its status lights winking as it worked to copy the workstation's data.

With a pained jolt, Armin realized what Annie was doing. She couldn't…

If she copied those ciphers, the Alliance was finished. With all of its communications codes in Imperial possession, the Alliance leadership would not even realize the danger before it was too late…

A part of him simmered with the desire to fight on, exhorting him to crawl… to reach for the blaster that he had dropped. At the same time, another part of him asked himself if he would really be capable of the resolve to shoot Annie down, even if he was able to reach his weapon before she stopped him. That part of his mind was already giving in, yielding to his fatigue and regret, pulling him towards the black void that was tempting him with a soothing promise of oblivion and peace.

Indeed, he just wanted to sleep… to momentarily forget his place in a universe that had done nothing but toy with him and subject him to darkness and grief…

Yet, even as he felt his life fading, Armin fought to cling on.

He could not die here… He could not die here… He just couldn't…

Faces flashed through his mind, staring at his dying body with sadness in their eyes.

Mina… Sasha… Thomas, Marco, and Christa…

Reiner and Eren and Mikasa and Connie…

Some were ghosts, he knew, others might soon join them as ghosts as well. He himself would be one, he realized.

He looked at Eren and Mikasa, trying to apologize. Their reunion at the fleet would never come.

He turned to the others next, begging his friends to help him stop Annie. They did not move. They merely stared back at him as though unable to understand, their gaze tender with pity and regret. Armin beseeched them again, calling out to them to help him. What Annie was doing… it would mean the end of everything that they had fought and died for…

The evacuation from Hoth would become an extermination. Star Destroyers would follow Alliance signal transmissions across open space, hunting down every ship and battle group one after another. The Emperor would win. Resistance to his rule would be shattered, beyond any chance of challenging his power for decades, even centuries… And Aldaraan—Aldaraan would have perished for nothing…

Could fate truly be that cruel?

The sound of something moving nearby surprised him, and the faces of his friends vanished before his eyes as Armin's mind returned to awareness in the physical world.

Below his neck, the burning pain from the wound in his chest was slowly disappearing. It had become harder for Armin to breathe, and he felt a deadly numbness spreading from his fingers and toes up his arms and legs as he tried and failed to lift his head a second time.

"Please… Annie…" he heard himself murmur.

His vision was fading at the edges, and it seemed as though the lights illuminating the room were steadily dimming…

Even as his body died, it seemed as though his mind was lingering, resisting the nightfall beckoning from beyond the horizon of his awareness. Emotions whirled through him, one after another—a kaleidoscope of sentiments.

Sadness, anger, regret, betrayal…

Why did he have the strangest sensation that he was now sitting up? Why did he feel something soft and warm on his face, something harsh and unyielding at his back?

Delusions. A cynical voice inside him laughed aloud in scorn and bitterness. Dying delusions, fueled by the last sputtering of a brain that was flickering out.

Had he always been deluded, in the end, after all?

So the galaxy really was a dark place, then. A dark and hopeless place… that laughed at the sacrifices and dearest wishes of those individuals who sought to change it… that coldly swallowed up their most defiant efforts as though nothing had happened…

A galaxy without a heart, that would, in time, shrug silently at everything that they had fought for…

A galaxy that had already forgotten that he and his friends had ever existed.

OOOOO

Following her well-drilled instincts, Annie's body automatically tried to return her blaster to the holster at her hip. Her mind, however, refused, ignoring her muscle memory's request, and the blaster pistol fell from her trembling hands. The weapon clattered to the floor with a metallic rattle that echoed around the room. She shuddered at the sound, letting out a short, disbelieving gasp as she staggered a step backwards, her eyes still staring down at the result of her handiwork.

She wanted to look away, yet she could not tear her eyes from the ghastly wound she had burned through the front of his flight suit, or from his graying face turned towards her with an expression of deepest hurt and disbelief.

Every portion of her emergency medical knowledge, from both her Imperial training and her Alliance experience, was confirming what she already knew—that Armin Arlert was dying before her eyes.

Why, of all people, had it been him?

A pool of blood was growing beneath his body, spreading across the metal floorplates. With a lancelike stab through her heart that almost made her cry out aloud, Annie realized that Armin was crying silently, the tears on his cheeks glinting dimly with reflected light.

What kind of a monster was she?

Killing her teammates Marlowe and Hitch had been awful enough. Marlowe had died before he could even react, but Hitch's howl of rage as she had grabbed, far too slowly and far too late, for the blaster at her hip continued to haunt Annie.

As the expression on Armin's face seared itself into her mind, Annie knew that this, too, would fill her nightmares for as long as she lived.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her blaster pistol lying abandoned on the floor. She had always known, after all, that she would have to kill Marlowe and Hitch one day… But Armin—he had merely been in the wrong place…

Of all the coincidences…

Annie felt as though a profound chill had passed through her flesh straight to the bone. Why had he been down here? By all rights, he should have evacuated in his starfighter with the rest of the transports long ago… What in the galaxy had brought him to this forsaken lower level, to this single room among all the hangars and corridors of Echo Base?

Yet, despite all of the questions filling Annie's head, she knew that she could only blame so much on fate and circumstance. This… this had not been an accident.

When she had looked up to see Armin standing at the entrance to the cryptology room, his blaster in hand, she had drawn her weapon and fired at him without hesitation. In that moment, knowing who he was and looking him directly in the eye, she had pulled the trigger with the full, malicious, merciless intent of killing him.

"Annie, why…?"

His voice was soft, barely audible as he struggled to lift his head. His flight helmet had fallen away, and his hair shifted, dropping over his eyes as he fought to raise his cheek from the floor.

Every cell in her body, hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands, was going numb with the wave of horror sweeping over her. She stood there, frozen, unable to avert her gaze or back away. Lashing out desperately, voices in her mind urged her to turn her back on him, to flee the room, or even to pick up her blaster and put an end his suffering.

In that instant before she'd fired that blaster bolt, her resolve had been ironclad in its determination. In the very next instant, as Armin had collapsed to the ground with a pained cry, her soul had been possessed by an overwhelming remorse so powerful that it had come close to sending her to her knees.

She could feel the threat of oncoming tears as her eyes began to sting.

She had never had any rational alternative, she knew… Once they had come face to face, her only option had been to shoot him. In fact, even if he had never met her down here, he would have died anyway because of her, killed fighting as the Empire tracked the fleeing fleet down in the months to come. Why, then, had Annie never regretted anything so badly in her entire life?

"Please… Annie…"

She could tell that his eyes could no longer focus on her clearly, yet all the same he continued staring desperately in her direction, his gaze piercing cleanly through her. She could see his body stiffening, his breathing slowing, the muscles in his face quivering as he held on to what life remained to him.

She could read his thoughts as though they were her own. Behind those eyes, he was fighting, protesting against the ending that fate had handed him. She felt his sorrow over what she was doing, his bitterness at how his life was ending, his helpless shame at having to die slowly in front of someone he—

Annie let out an anguished gasp.

Tears, scalding hot in spite of the prickling coolness of her cheeks, raced in searing lines down her face. Her heart felt as though it had just burst within her, scattering scraps of ligaments and cardiac muscle across the insides of her chest. She was trembling, caught in the grips of a swelling wave of sorrow that made her want to scream and fall, limbs flailing, to the ground.

Instead, she dimly realized that she was staggering forward step by step towards the figure lying there in a pool of his own blood. Blood that she had spilled, forgetting how he had walked beside her through the winding corridors above, how his eyes had widened at her taunting jabs, how his pupils had lit up when he had spoken of the rebellion and the hopes it represented…

No.

She was kneeling at his side, his warm blood seeping into her black uniform pants at the knees. She was wrapping her arms around his body, pulling him shakily into a sitting position, placing his back against the frame of the nearest work console.

Peering through eyes hopelessly swelling with tears, Annie noticed that Armin's own eyes had closed, and that she could no longer perceive the rise and fall of his chest from his breathing.

For him… to die like this…

She, of all people, could well imagine the nightmare of what it would be like to die alone. It was too cruel… It wasn't right…

She leaned over him and kissed him on the lips.

In that moment, she felt the life leave his body.

Annie fell backwards and yielded to the intense urge to sob. She squeezed her eyes shut as she began crying in earnest, hoping desperately from every corner of her soul that Armin had lingered long enough to sense her touch and know that she had been there at the very end…

She could feel his blood soaking her uniform, but she did not care. Annie buried her head in her arms, and a fleeting heat briefly tingled across the skin of her forearm as her sleeve absorbed the tears on her face.

She wept.

In her mind, she could hear her father's voice scolding her for sitting there, unmoving and helpless. Armin was dead. What she had done was done. From the very beginning, this had all been planned, and so what was the use of crying, when the blood on her hands had been there from the day she'd joined the Alliance? There was nothing for her to do now but return home, having faithfully completed her terrible duty.

She looked at Armin again, her eyes resting on his still face, his brow furrowed ever so slightly in pain.

He had known, hadn't he? Annie wondered desperately. Surely he had known that she hadn't wanted this… He had to have understood, hadn't he? Hadn't he been able to imagine how she had felt all along, how her tormenting dread had grown and grown as this day had slowly neared?

Had he even spared a thought for her in his last moments? After all, he had died, alone, believing that everything and everyone that he had fought for had been taken away from him… Annie would not fault him if it had never occurred to him to think of her…

Only one fact comforted her, and that was her certain knowledge that he had not hated her.

Suddenly, Annie's ears noticed the clash of armored boots against metal.

Annie clambered to her feet and wiped her eyes just in time as a sextet of white-clad snowtroopers rushed in through the open doors, sweeping their blaster rifles from side-to-side as they stepped mechanically into the room. Their scorched and pitted armor suggested that they had fought their way through heavy resistance along their way, yet their movements were crisp and efficient, showing no trace of fatigue or injury. A brief flash of anger rose inside her at the sight of her fellow servants of the Empire.

The soldiers sighted her immediately and a heartbeat later, six weapon barrels were aimed squarely at her chest.

"Don't move!" bellowed the second trooper who had entered the room. Colored pauldrons mounted over his chest armor indicated his status as an officer.

"Alpha-Six-Two-Mu-Delta," intoned the snowtrooper with the major's shoulder plates, his finger poised on the trigger of his blaster rifle, ready to cut her down at an instant's notice.

At the sound of the code signal that had been drilled so irrevocably into her head spoken aloud at last, Annie swayed, feeling once again as though she were about to collapse at any moment.

"Zeta-Epsilon-Four-Zero-Phi," Annie murmured in response, choking the words out.

The syllables caught in her throat as involuntary sobs continued to grip her lungs. As she finished the codephrase, a murderous feeling of hatred seized her, and her eyes burned yet again. She closed them, her thoughts consumed with disgust at the backhandedness of her treachery, at the blackness of her father's agenda, and at her own contemptible weakness for having gone meekly along with it all…

When she opened her eyes again, the six snowtroopers had lowered their blasters.

The snowtrooper major nodded. "Good work, Agent Sierra-Four. We followed your signal here as soon as we could. Is everything complete?"

As he spoke, his head turned to inspect Armin's body. His body language as uncaring and emotionless as the mask of the helmet he war, the officer returned his gaze to Annie, satisfied that the dead rebel pilot was no longer a threat.

Annie, too, looked back down at where Armin sat, his head leaning back against the workstation as though he were napping. She could see the trace of wetness glistening on his cheek where their faces had touched, and she did not know if the tears had come from his eyes or her own. Yes, she thought bitterly, a fresh tear escaping from the inner corner of one of her eyes. She supposed everything was complete.

"We brought a communications booster with us. Synchronize the code database with our booster, and we can upload everything to the fleet," one of the other soldiers directed, totally oblivious to her condition as he placed a black suitcase-like device upon the ground and began setting it up.

At the sight of her tears, the stormtrooper major paused for a moment where he stood. Slinging his weapon across his back, he removed his helmet, revealing a face with handsome features and a black, trimmed goatee that his ranking status as an elite officer permitted him. Despite the man's aristocratic look, his eyes were tinged with true sympathy as he spoke.

"Ma'am, are you all right? This must have been difficult for you, I'm sure."

He sighed, looking back down at the fallen pilot at Annie's feet, and this time his expression carried a note of understanding.

"I've extracted Intelligence agents from deep cover operations before…" he continued, nodding sadly. "It's natural that you make friends with those you've lived with for so long. If there's anything I—"

Her father had drilled the motion into her since she'd been old enough to handle a blaster. He had watched over Annie's shoulder as she'd repeated the movements he'd taught her over and over and over again, aiming and blasting away at the holograms of sinister-looking Rebels darting around the target range. Every day at the end of training, she had repeated the action in front of him ten, sometimes twenty times before he would allow her to leave the academy's instructional facility.

She jerked her left hand, sending the snub-nosed blaster holstered at her wrist into her left palm. It took only an instant. She had it grasped in a high two-handed grip, her finger settling on the cool metal of the trigger as she aimed squarely at her target.

Her father had ordered the pistol custom-built for her. Compact and light, its power pack only sufficed for eight shots, but each possessed the energy to punch through a solid inch of durasteel. At the time, its volume and recoil had frightened her, making her flinch badly with each pull of the trigger on the practice range. Only the best in the Empire for my Annie, Director Leonhart had declared proudly.

Her first shot struck the Imperial major in the face. Even with her body numb and shivering, even with her eyes filled with tears, she swung the blaster unerringly from target to target, blasting two more snowtroopers cleanly through the chest before the stormtrooper major had even begun to fall.

They reacted as though in slow motion. The next soldier had barely started to raise his blaster rifle when her shot caught him in the neck. Her pistol was already moving on, placing a blaster bolt in the gut of the stormtrooper who had been kneeling as he worked with the comm booster.

The last snowtrooper was diving for cover, hurling himself behind a console in the center of the room, and Annie emptied her blaster, firing a three-shot sequence of blaster bolts that caught the soldier in the chestplate. He hit the ground just short of the workstation and rolled onto his back, limp as a doll.

Annie's ears throbbed from the force of her blaster's roar. Her head felt light, and her vision was swimming before her eyes. Years of training, however, kept her alert and moving, and she was already tossing the spent sidearm aside, reaching for the blaster rifle hanging by its strap from her right shoulder as she heard footsteps in the hall outside. She was still sobbing, even as she swung the weapon from her back, catching it in her hands.

She had the heavy rifle raised just in time to greet the first snowtrooper entering through the door. She pulled the trigger twice, and the room filled with crimson light as the Imperial soldier fell, nearly blown apart at the waist.

Alarmed voices drifted in through the open door, and she turned the rifle without hesitation on the opposite wall. Her ears rang painfully as she sent a barrage of blaster bolts piercing straight through the wall at waist level, each shot placed one person-width apart from the next. Screams of agony from the other side of the doorway told her that her fire had found multiple targets.

"Long gun! Get back!" a robotic voice called out from the outside hall. "Find cover!"

Annie stumbled over to the data terminal beside her. Blinded by her tears, she entered the coded keystrokes by touch and memory, opening her access to the cipher key data. She worked furiously, racing through screen after screen of commands, her ears still listening intently for movement from the hallway outside.

All of her life, she had lived under the tenet her father had taught her—the tenet that no other individual being in the galaxy mattered, that cruelty and injustice were natural and commonplace, and that those who believed otherwise condemned themselves to die, disillusioned and disappointed.

Code names flashed before her eyes. Decrypted Imperial ciphers. Alliance ciphers. Prototype encryption keys. Intercepted code samples. Zettabytes and zettabytes of filed cryptanalysis calculations.

Far too late, Annie had realized that she had met individuals that had mattered, to her.

She did not care if her father was right. What mattered to her was that she had killed two close friends who had trusted her to help them complete their mission, and that a young, brave, hopeful pilot had died with his dreams shattered, still wanting to believe in the possibility of changing the galaxy.

She could still change that.

She entered a final set of clearance codes, and watched through eyes blurred with brimming tears as a confirmation message appeared on the holo-display:

TASK COMPLETE.

ALL DATABANKS ERASED.

Shouldering her blaster rifle, she took aim at the data drive she'd plugged into the terminal and destroyed it with a single shot.

If only Armin could see what she had done… if only he could have known that he had not died defeated…

At that moment, the lock securing the set of closed doors behind Annie clicked open.

She whirled, firing a two-bolt burst that caught the snowtrooper trying to enter squarely in the groin and collar. The lifeless soldier collapsed forward, sprawling across the metal-plated floor with a resounding crash as Annie adjusted her aim, firing three shots through the wall on either side of the now-open doors. A second later, another dead Imperial fell across the doorway, pierced by the beams she had sent through the doorframe.

As the soldier hit the ground, Annie thought back to that afternoon in Echo Base's main hanger, when she'd looked up after toppling an adult male Wookie warrior only to see Armin's dumbfounded, awestruck face staring at her with an expression of shock that had almost made her chuckle.

How had he not been intimidated? What had he seen in her that had led him to follow her, to engage her in conversation, to grin uneasily at her barbs and her terseness?

She reflected that, perhaps, with his faith in justice and his ability to hope, he really had understood her better than either of them had realized.

Transferring the blaster rifle to her left hand, Annie unclipped a squat cylinder from her ammunition bandolier. Squeezing the device's safety lever closed, she pressed its activation button with her thumb before hurling it through the door in front of her. She heard a loud clatter as it bounced off of something solid out of her sight.

The flechette charge exploded a handful of heartbeats later with a sound somewhere between a pop and a hiss. Ducking as she brought her rifle up again, Annie heard the air whistle above her as dozens of durasteel darts flashed past overhead. The detonation was followed by howls of pain from the other side of the doorway, and Annie sensed that the grenade had been effective.

She turned, just in time.

Another stormtrooper was leaning around the first doorway, the black eyelenses of his helmet staring at her pitilessly as the soldier attempted to bring his blaster rifle to bear. She put a blaster bolt through his chest, following it with a second bolt that blew an ugly hole through the trooper's faceplate. He fell across the threshold, his rifle firing a single errant shot as his finger squeezed the trigger reflexively in death.

For a moment, all was silent as Annie kept her blaster rifle trained on the doorway, its sights placed precisely upon the center of the opening. Then, a strange flash of movement caught her eye as something small and white flew towards her through the door, bouncing once across the ground before rolling to a stop several meters away.

Annie narrowed her eyes as she recognized the device.

A standard stormtrooper-issue thermal detonator. Powerful, with a fearsome blast radius in the tens of meters. Each Imperial trooper carried one attached to his belt behind his back, activating it via keypad using a personalized code unique to each soldier. The fuse length could be configured for anywhere to three to thirty seconds.

The default delay was set at ten seconds.

Annie felt her heart begin to race. If the thrower had been too panicked to change that setting, and if she could get to it first, she might be able to toss it back through the door in time, incinerating the whole squad of snowtroopers waiting outside.

She dropped her blaster rifle. She dashed across the floor, her arm reaching out for the deadly white cylinder. Her fingers closed around the device, and her head spun to look at the doorway as she raised it, aiming a throw that would send the explosive into the hallway outside…

The thermal detonator exploded.

OOOOO