Seth stood in the cockpit of the Dauntless, just behind Yex, who silently worked the controls of this vessel he now called home. He stared at Hoth, which was a ball of white, tinged with pale blue. It grew gradually as they approached it.

Behind them, the door slid open.

"Have they responded?" Maya asked as she stepped in.

"I'm afraid not," Yex replied. "Should I stay on course?"

Maya sighed, coming to stand next to Seth. She scrutinized the silent planet, her gray eyes intense. "Have you managed to run any scans?"

"Yes, although weather in the region is interfering with them. As best I can determine, there are life signs at the Republic outpost. There are also a scattering of life signs, some sentient, some not, across the region, with another concentration at the abandoned mining installation. Unfortunately, this does not necessarily help narrow down the true status of the outpost. I am at least reading several energy sources there, so they still have power."

"Stay on course, and keep trying to talk with them. Seth...come with me."

She about faced and left the cockpit. Seth stared at the planet for a few seconds longer, then followed after her, matching her brisk pace. She led him silently down the passageway, through the galley, and into the right corridor. Ultimately, they came to the armory, where both Nova and Seri were pulling on armor.

"How is it?" Nova asked.

Seth immediately went to the locker he'd set aside for himself, opened it up, and began pulling on his customized Republic Mod Armor.

"No contact, but there's at least life signs and energy readings at the outpost. Yex is taking us in. I'm going to expect the worst, given that this is a warzone we're flying into, so I want all of you ready to fight if need be. Seri, you might be needed to deal with casualties, so be ready. Seth, Nova, I'll be relying on you for backup if we do find ourselves in a combat situation."

"Understood," Seth replied.

"I'll be ready," Seri said, and Nova nodded tightly.

As he finished pulling on his armor and started grabbing his arsenal and inventory, Seth tried to tell himself that it was probably just a malfunctioning comms array or bad weather. Either were possible, even probable.

But his gut wouldn't let him believe that.

* * *

Seth stood with his back to the wall in the little receiving bay outside of the airlock, listening to as much as enduring the rattling of the Dauntless as it burned through the atmosphere of Hoth. He was about as ready as he was going to be for this.

The comms unit mounted on the wall beside him crackled to life. "Now that we are closer to the surface, I'm detecting weapons fire coming from our landing zone. There is definitely a battle in progress," Yex reported.

Seth reached over and hit the respond button. "See if you can get us in behind enemy lines, fast and low." He paused. "This thing have any weapons?"

"Unfortunately not," Yex replied.

He sighed. "All right. What kind of numbers are we looking at here? Locations?"

"It is hard to tell, but I believe the enemy forces are fifty strong, mostly firing from a ridge overlooking the base. They have a few vehicles that are moving into position. I think they may be siege engines of some kind."

"Damn. All right. Good piloting."

"Good fighting."

Seth let go of the button, then hesitated, realizing all at once that he'd kind of just taken control of the situation. He glanced at Maya. "Guess I should've run that by you first."

"You're the soldier here," she replied. "I said I'd defer to your recommendation during combat situations, which this certainly is."

"Okay. Thanks. Seri, I'll want you providing cover fire from wherever you can. Nova, Maya, we're hitting them hard and fast. We won't have the advantage for long, I imagine, so we're going to try and turn the tide fast. I'll be going for one of the vehicles. If you can keep them busy or off of me for long enough, I can get onboard and turn it against them."

"That's...very risky," Maya said.

"I know," he replied.

Maya stared at him for a moment, then sighed. "Very well."

"Let's get into the airlock." He keyed the comms again. "Yex, we're heading into the airlock. Open up the exterior door the second we're down."

"Understood."

They filtered into the airlock, which was just about big enough for all four of them to fit without too much trouble. Nova sealed the inner door behind them and Seth began the process of matching interior pressure to exterior atmosphere. All around them, the room started to hiss, mixing in with the vibration of orbital reentry.

"Don't get yourself killed," Nova said, standing very close to him.

"Right back at you," he replied.

She snorted and rolled her eyes. "I'm not the crazy one in this relationship."

"Is that what we have now? A relationship?"

"Oh shut up," she said, shoving him.

He laughed. "Hey, I'm not complaining."

Suddenly, the rattling began to taper off. Seth focused up, thumbing the overcharge on his blaster rifle. Already, he could hear shrieking winds and distant blaster fire outside. "Get ready, it's gonna be bad out there."

Moving up to the door, blaster rifle aimed right at the crack where it would split open, Seth tried to prepare himself for the nightmare that was to come. The ship landed with a hard thud and almost immediately after that, the doors opened up. The howling winds immediately grew louder and snow began blasting into the airlock.

"Go! Go! Go!" Seth screamed as he hopped off the ledge and landed a few feet below with a heavy grunt, not waiting for the ramp to finish extending. He was already booking it for the nearest vehicle, which turned out to indeed be a siege weapon, a tank, kicking his way through the snowdrifts. He had a frag grenade in hand, ready to put it to use the second it looked like they were clued in on the fact that they were getting hit from behind. It didn't take long for that to happen, but he supposed he shouldn't be surprised given that they'd flown in with a good-sized ship.

As soon as the first blaster fire stabbed out at him, Seth primed and chucked the grenade, then did the same thing with a second one, throwing them to either side of the tank he was now about twenty meters shy of. He kept running, opening fire with his blaster rifle, the overcharged shot landing in the chest of a Sith soldier right as the grenades went off. The first he'd overshot and it only knocked a few soldiers over, but the other had landed perfectly and sent a quartet of silver-armored assholes flying through the air to their doom.

He kept firing as he closed the gap, pushing himself as hard as he could. If he didn't go fast enough, they were all going to die. Seth climbed up onto the back of the tank, letting his rifle hang by its sling. As soon as he was up on top, he pulled out his sidearm and moved over to the hatch that would let him in. He punched the open button and found that the crew inside hadn't done their due diligence: they'd left it unlocked.

Too bad for them.

One of them screamed something, in anger or surprise, as Seth aimed down into the control cabin below. He popped off one shot, then two, and finally a third, all in rapid succession. He capped all three of them in the heads and dropped down into the cabin, hoping that this tank didn't have any additional crew onboard, because it shouldn't. He'd guessed right: he was alone. Seth holstered his pistol and took a seat at the turret controls. He stared into the digital display, seeing snow and the Republic outpost. Quickly, he guided the turret to the right and zeroed his sights on another tank. As soon as it was lined up, he fired.

The shell shrieked out of the barrel and slammed into the tank, immediately consuming it in a brilliant plume of flame. There were three tanks on the battlefield, Seth had seen, and he had to eliminate the last remaining one before it did so to him. The very second he confirmed the kill, he began to bring the barrel around as fast as it would allow. The seconds ground by with torturous lethargy. As he began to get the other tank in his sights, he realized that his secret was out: it was turning towards him as well.

Well, this was going to be close.

He kept going, his focus honed down to a narrow beam, breath coming heavy, heart pounding in his chest. He waited for that indicator to light up, letting him know that he had the perfect shot, because he was only going to get one shot at this.

It lit up.

Seth fired.

Right as his shell smashed into the tank, he saw it begin to launch its own round. It shrieked past him, avoiding his own tank likely by mere inches. As he watched it go up in flames, Seth let out his breath in one long, slow exhalation. Refocusing, he checked the area around him, then began to back his tank out of the line of fire from the Republic forces, just in case, and prepared to help them finish cleaning up the local Sith.

* * *

An hour later, Seth sat with most of the rest of the crew in a small receiving bay.

After helping the local forces finish off the remaining Sith, they'd managed to make contact without too much trouble. They'd spent most of the time after the battle helping deal with the immediate aftermath of it. Mainly tending to wounded, either right there in the snow if it was bad enough or carrying them inside. The only one absent at the moment was Seri, who had gone into the infirmary not long after the battle and hadn't come out yet. Seth imagined she was in her element and wished her luck.

When they'd finished dealing with the wounded, a Corporal had identified them and brought them into the base, then told them to hurry up and wait until the commanding officer could come and brief them on the latest developments.

They'd been waiting for fifteen minutes now.

Seth and Nova were sitting next to each other on the floor, their backs to the wall, just trying to come down after the battle. Yex sat in one of the few chairs, studying a datapad in silence. Maya stood with her hands clasped behind her back at the only window in the room, staring out at the snow as it blew silently past.

Finally, the door opened again and a pale man with heavy, dark bags under his eyes stepped in. His uniform was rumpled and stained, his short hair a wild mess. Seth and Nova stood up, Maya turned from the window, Yex powered down and pocketed the datapad.

"Hello, I'm Staff Sergeant Fielding, how can I help you?" he asked. Seth felt for the guy, he sounded as exhausted as he looked.

"Where is Master Sergeant Lindholm?" Maya asked.

"Dead, I'm afraid. He was killed in an attack yesterday. I'm now acting commanding officer of this outpost. I've been told that you were coming, but I'm afraid I haven't managed to be brought up to speed on why exactly you're here. Although your help is most definitely appreciated." He turned to look at Seth. "That stunt with the tank was...inspired."

"I'm just glad I could help," Seth replied.

"So am I and every person in this facility."

"My name is Maya Corix. In short, we represent a joint Jedi-Republic operation. We're hunting a dangerous breed of creatures. They're called terentateks. We had received intel that one such creature was here."

"Oh yes...the creature. I did read that report. So you're here to kill it, then? Why? I mean, don't get me wrong. I heard what it did, it sounded bad, but...why come all this way just to kill one creature?" he asked.

"It's a product of the Dark Side. They spend decades in hibernation and only come out when the Dark Side is on the rise. We want to eliminate them from the galaxy, so we need to take every opportunity we can to kill them," Maya replied.

"Huh, that makes sense. Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask if you lot would be willing to pitch in around here? You seem pretty able and mobile. If you could help us deal with a few critical issues, it would be deeply, deeply appreciated," Fielding asked.

Maya glanced at Seth. "I'm okay with pitching in. What do you think?"

"It does seem like a good idea and the right thing to do," Maya said. She nodded and looked back at Fielding. "What do you need done?"

"Right now our absolute top necessity is repairing our heating units. It gets down to negative eighty during the nights and never even approaches above freezing, even on the best days. Naturally, we rely on heating units as much as any space station would. Three of the four have broken down due to a combination of malfunction, poor maintenance, and the Sith attacks. We have one left and it's working over capacity to keep us at even a reasonable temperature. We've had to close down whole sections of the base just to keep it from blowing out, and even that's not enough, not for long. We had managed to identify a potential source of parts crucial for repairing the units. This weather outpost was actually one of a pair. If you could take your ship and some of my men over to it and salvage those parts, it would help so much."

"We can definitely do that," Seth said.

"Good. The only other big thing we need is help recovering a supply shuttle. We're running low on supplies because our resupply shuttle got shot down two days ago by the Sith and we haven't been able to locate it yet. We're working on trying to get it narrowed down and just hoping that the Sith haven't found it, nor has it been completely destroyed, because we desperately need the supplies. Unfortunately this blizzard has been going on for three days straight now. Other than that, your selkath really seems to know her way around a medical bay, and Force knows we could use another medic around here. I don't suppose you have an equally skilled technician among you?"

"I am," Yex said.

"I...don't speak ithorian," Fielding replied hesitantly. "I'm sorry."

"This is Yex. He is as skilled a technician as our selkath medic, Seri, is."

"And I would be more than willing to help."

"And he would love to help."

"Oh, thank you so much. Our power grid is having difficulty as well." He looked at Maya. "Is it true that Jedi can help accelerate healing?"

"Some can. I can," she replied.

"Okay, good. If at all possible, we could use you in the infirmary. Our kolto reserves are starting to wear very thin."

"I understand." She looked at Seth and Nova. "Can you handle the salvage operation?"

Seth glanced at Nova, who nodded. "We can," he said, then he looked at Fielding. "Can you spare a pilot?"

"I can," he replied.

"Okay, perfect. Um...let's see. First, have someone take Yex to the heating units. I want him to draw up a comprehensive and precise list of all we'll need. Then, have your squad that you're willing to send along meet me here. As soon as they get here, I'll lead them to our ship. Yex, you can transmit the info to us as soon as you're finished."

"Understood. Good luck."

"You as well," Seth replied.

"Okay, I'll get this going. Uh, Jedi Corix, I can show you to the infirmary on the way. And then I am going to take a nap because I am on the verge of passing out," Fielding muttered as he turned and left the room.

Maya and Yex followed after him.

Seth and Nova remained behind, waiting for the others.

It looked like they were going to have their hands full for a little while.