The hollow roar of transports rolled across the planet's surface.

The problem now was to get to his ship, while Sano still had one waiting. The south field was just over a low rise, but given the trouble that he'd had just negotiating the ice plain from the wrecked speeder to the Rebel lines, Sano knew he needed a shortcut and fast.

Heading toward the open launch bay doors, he spotted an untended tauntaun that looked as much in need of being unhitched from its keeper bar as he was of getting to the other side of the base. Perhaps they could work something out.

Ignoring the smell, Sano hauled himself into the saddle. Reining the beast around, he plunged into the darkness of the launch bay.

*

She was never going to make it out to the X-wing in time, Ariel realized. The base was huge inside and she had no idea where she was. The evacuation code had stopped repeating over the comm.

She opened a hatch at random and discovered the speeder bay. Burnt wires and broken hoses hung out of the engine cases of the remaining snowspeeders. Charred components lay strewn on the ground.

By the wall, propped on its center stand, stood one lone speeder bike. Without hope, Ariel pressed the starter. The bike sputtered to life. She threw her leg over it and kicked it off the stand.

As soon as she hit the outer air, it became clear why the speeder bike had been abandoned. The icy wind was a physical assault. Tears blurred her eyes. She hoped her fingers wouldn't freeze around the handlebars.

*

Tocneppil staggered out of the south field's bay into the sunlight at last, his blaster dangling from one finger on minimum reserve.

He found Tam waiting, blaster out as well. He crouched behind a trans-case next to Sano's ship. "Where the hell have y-?!" Tam's voice trailed off. Tocneppil sprinted toward him. His flight suit was now a mix of black grime smeared in some kind of foul-smelling red and white goo.

Sano holstered his weapon. It didn't have enough charge to do more than stun anyhow. Unhooking his helmet, he tossed it to Tam, who looked at him incredulously. "Glad you could make it." Sano elbowed his way past and dug out his passkey to open the primary hatch.

"I want you to know, the one you gave me doesn't work," Tam said as he rushed in after Sano.

Sealing the hatch, Tocneppil practically dove into the cockpit. "Gripe, gripe, gripe. I'm not dead, this is still my ship, and you're gettin' a ride. So you got rendezvous co-ords?"

"The first jump's worth. But we nee-"

Sano cut him off again. "Close enough."

With a hiss of repulsors against snow, the Dreamer lurched to one side. Finally, achieving a gravity purchase, it leapt skyward. No ion cannon would cover their escape. The handful of X-wings that had remained behind were already scattering to all points outbound.

*

Kelly watched the last transport blast out, three X-wings flying cover. No more ion cannon to disrupt the Star Destroyers' weapons. Kelly had felt the explosion, heard what it was on the comm.

The last transport was gone. Everybody who was getting out had gotten out. The battle between the Empire and those left behind was muffled, but getting closer.

Doc and Sam weren't coming, Kelly thought, before he could stop himself.

Walker steps shook the deck. Kelly knew it was time to raise ship. He fired the engines up, remembering his last glimpses of Dantooine, home.

Kelly had been helping his oldest sister, Karyn, load the last of the supplies into the medical shuttle when the Imperials hit. Stormtroopers rushed the landing pad from both sides, burning down everyone in their paths. Karyn pushed Kelly into the cargo hold.

"Stay there. You'll be safe."

"C'mon," Kelly pleaded. "There's room."

Behind her, the supply warehouse exploded into flame. She shook her head and pulled a blaster from a vest pocket. "One of us will contact you."

She slammed the hatch and sealed him in. Only when he felt the lurch of the engines kicking in did he realize she was sending him away. Luckily for him, the ship had turned out to be the Plague.

It had been three years. There'd been no word from his family. Kelly knew there never would be. And now, he thought, now he was adding Doc and Sam to his list of family left behind. Survival, he began to realize, was overrated.

"Kelly!" The voice cut through the comm chatter like a vibroblade. "Kid, I hope you're still there."

"Doc." He slapped the switch and grinned. "Where the Core y'been? I -"

"Save it, kid. We got the whole fleet on our backs out here," Doc snapped. "Get back here and let us in. I got my hands full."

Kelly swallowed more questions and headed back. He opened the hatch. "Stang."

Sam leaned on Doc, barely conscious. Doc was nearly doubled over under his weight. Kelly stepped onto the ramp to grab Sam. He caught the big man's right shoulder and felt the blood.

Sam grunted at the contact. "Looks worse 'n it is."

Kelly didn't answer. He helped Sam back to the lab and eased him onto a bed. Kelly turned to Doc. "Can you get him strapped down? I gotta get us off this rock."

*

"Input the jump sequence and, trust me here, you'll want to strap in now."

Tam had barely begun to punch in the co-ords when Sano whistled for his attention. "That's about enough, wouldn't you say?"

On the main screen, a half-dozen Avenger-class Destroyers clustered around one massive Super Star Destroyer. Admittedly, one of them was out of action, tilted wildly in a shallow orbit. Two more looked to have run into each other.

"We can't make the jump anywhere from point oh three oh to nine three nine," Tam informed him.

Sano half-listened, contemplating the scanner spread. There were still some holes there. Why they hadn't deployed better to seal Hoth's orbital vectors was a mystery.

Then again, perhaps not. Given the massive asteroid field stretching across fully one-third of the Hoth system, they just had to run a containment zone here.

Sano wondered how many ships had made it away since the cannon went down. How many more would be able to, themselves included?

"We can't make anything from the oh-eights to the oh-fours, either! In fact, this navicomp doesn't want to hold anything I put into it." Tam's voice took on a note of accusation.

"It'll do that sometimes," Sano growled. "Let me know if there's any fighters headed our way."

A quartet of TIEs angled toward them as if the mere act of mentioning them had conjured them into existence.

Long-range gunnery was one thing. Being hot-boxed by fighters when you didn't have a turret system and couldn't run for it, that was something else entirely.

A narrow gap opened at one side of the formation as the Super Star Destroyer and one of the Avenger-class ships headed off toward the fringes of the belt. Whoever they were chasing, Sano hoped they wanted 'em bad enough to knock themselves out trying.

"Hold tight and don't forget those co-ords!"

With that bare warning, Sano headed the Dreamer toward the nearest Star Destroyer. He slammed the Dreamer into hyperdrive, then cut the sequence off almost as fast as the motivator kicked in. There was a hellish lurch. The stars distorted into semi-elongated blur and, suddenly, they were back in normal space -- literally a hundred meters from the bow of the massive ship.

"You're insane!" Tam shouted, grabbing at his accell-straps.

"Remind me to tell you about insane sometime." Tocneppil wheeled the ship 120-degrees, reset controls, and initiated yet another jump sequence, this time winding up squarely between a pair of Star Destroyers. Both were scarred and damaged along their facing sides, as if from a glancing collision. That there almost no operational gun turrets along those sides was the only thing that saved the Dreamer.

Pulling hard up and around, Sano threw the ship into climbing run that became another truncated jump. This one took them to the edge of the asteroid belt.

"Noway, noday. " He grimaced, turning thrusters away from the rock-drift, preferring to take his chance with the still off-guard fleet.

The next hop put them within paint-scraping distance of a Star Destroyer's bridge. There was barely enough time to maneuver and blink out before a web of reactive laserfire filled the space they'd occupied.

Tam let out a yell that Sano matched enthusiastically. The main difference was that he was enjoying himself.

A pair of TIEs closed with them, lasers reaching eagerly.

Sano mashed down on the thruster bar and headed between them -- back toward the center of the fleet. "Still got those co-ords? Now's the time"

He began to weave the ship sickeningly, making it hard for the any of the gunners around them to get a decent fix.

Tam finished inputting in time to see the frozen world below them fill the screen. A single Star Destroyer was silhouetted against it, lacing the area around it with brilliant green slashes of laserfire. It made for quite a long last look before the final -- this time prolonged -- hyperspace jump took them away once and for all.

To be continued...