The swirling blue tunnel of hyperspace matter receded before their eyes. Stars everywhere, coming to life like a grandiose bouquet of flowers opening in a flicker, once more shining majesty in their eternal stillness.

In sight was a milky sphere, tainted with a myriad of moving specks. The arctic planet Hoth, and its skirt of space debris.
As soon as the planet stopped growing and the last stellar streaks became dots, signalling subspace travel, a soft but fast paced alarm started ringing, filling the cockpit. One you didn't hear often - the last time was when the party had been caught in a dreadnought's interdiction beam tractor.

The republican space station was on the other side of the planet - and they were not headed towards it.

"Warning - gravity unstable. Recommend flight pattern delta", said the ship's gentle automated female voice. Kenobewan smoothly pulled the lateral thrusters of the Defender so as to adapt to the planet's uncanny gravitation, and then slowly engaged the rear ones, and let the ship's algorithms determine how to best surf opposing gravity currents by herself. He also disengaged the safety latch on a big square pad on the far left of his console and pressed it. "T7 - I'm activating encrypted navcapture subsystems. Plug in and download everything."

"T7 = great astromech // Defender + T7 = improving navdata for SIS"

Focused on the approach with ever more derelict vessels ahead, the Jedi knight solemnly addressed his crew without taking his eyes from the windscreen. "My friends, in case we don't make it, T7 is the priority."

Sitting at her master's right hand, Kira took a good look at him, as if to size him up one last time. An ageless man - was he stock human? - he had white hair and beard, but his skin, a dark healthy skin, shone; it was not the skin of an old man. Blue eyes that pierced the darkness, be it the darkness of a tunnel or the darkness of a soul - always with a glint in them, that inspired them all, that inspired and renewed hope in the most battered and desperate of cornered soldiers they'd ever met. Right now these blue eyes were locked onto the targets of his attention like tracer missiles. His brow was imperceptibly frowning, yet it contrasted a lot with the open, earnest face he had sometimes. His closed mouth expressed unwavering seriousness and the cascade of his white beard made his hooded face look like a fortress. They were all in full combat gear, and his was a medium-heavy plate under a plain brown jedi robe which marked his broad shoulders. He had the luminous aura of a combat angel. She could follow him into hell.

She looked at the cold white planet, and all the shipwrecks. She stared into the space. She sighed. Okay. Time to change the mood.

"Do you ever wonder why they made these ones beep and whizz instead of just have them talk? This little guy can't speak basic and the other one just can't shut up", she remarked with a smirk, ready to enjoy C2-N2's protests.

And sure enough, a metallic voice coming from the rear of the ship started, with a melody worthy of a holoadvert : "Madam! I can assure you this droid has been equipped with the finest discretion routines! Our verbobrains monitor sentient reaction and willingness to engage in conversation with a point o o o three percent margin of error, according to the latest Cybot benchmark! Should you wish to modify the rate or amount of our speech, all you need to do is..."

"C2. Deactivate speech. Thank you. Kira... I'm trying to concentrate here", Kenobewan ordered in a voice both gentle and leaving no room for discussion, yet somehow amused.

"Yes, master."

All the while, the ginger-haired padawan had been voicing the exact same musical modulations as the protocol droid as it was recommending... only the discourse itself was a bit different: "Blah blah, yadda yadda. Ramble ramble, shiny yappy protocol droid, la la laaa.. oh, where's my "shut your trap button"? Oh, dear, oh dear, I don't have one."

Speaking of the ship's protocol droid, it had not lied when it had introduced the Jedi to his appointed vessel once upon a time on Coruscant. It was state of the art indeed. To think it was almost in mint condition when he had first stepped into it... it looked quite worn already.

Kenobewan set her on a course parallel to the ice planet's equator, precisely where it would be hardest to navigate the gravitational oddity. It was starting to feel like being struck in traffic - there were so many ghost ships and ship debris around them! Slowly orbiting the planet until the day they would finally fall prey and bury themselves in the snow forever after a brief time ablaze in the atmosphere.

"Ok, we're going in", the Jedi said. Specific coordinates had started flashing on his console. The ship plunged towards the atmosphere, where it was the thickest white. Moments later they were surrounded by impenetrable cotton, and the Defender started pitching and skidding like crazy, hammered by rolling crosswinds, several alarms beeping at the same time. After a thud and a loud "OUCH! MOTHERSPACIN' BANTHAS!" coming from the stairs as Doc hit his head hard with the thick hollow railings, everyone took a flight seat in the cockpit, fastened their belts and wrapped the emergency life support systems around their forearms. "Warning - distance and volume of terrain unfathomable, pitch uncertain" said the navcomputer. "Nice timely warning, eh?", grumbled Doc as he was trying to apply a quick patch of kolto to the bloody lump on his forehad and right cheekbone. "Bet that's why they gave you a woman's voice!" He fumbled, and saw the green sludge splatter on Kira's robe next to her ankles. She didn't notice. He grinned, despite the pain.

"Good idea, T7" said Kenobewan. As snow was piling up on the cockpit transparisteel, the little astromech droid, still connected to the ship's navcomputers, but now clenched to both the floor and the wall in a corner dedicated to his kind in emergency landings, had managed to clear the viewscreen.
"T7 = activated ship shields to ward off snow // Windscreen visibility = up 74.6 %"

Kira sighed."Oh great, we still can't see a thing, but now we can see that we can't see a thing. Isn't team work grand?"

"T7 = Hero // Kira = Annoying" the little droid tchirped back, his head rotating back and forth between looking at her and at his master.

"Well, you know what they say about all work and no play. We could use a vaca-"

All of a sudden all were knocked off of their seat reclines, stopped dead in their tracks by the safety belts, their winds knocket out of them in the process. A thunderous SNAP. It had hit from nowhere, frightfully rocking the ship. A horrible, tremendous CRUNCH, braided into the concussion, lingered in their their ears.
It was as if it had come from the ship itself.

"Whoa!", shouted Doc, coming to, "what was that?!!"

Now, wails. A series of grinding metal wails coming from her very innards wrenched their ears.

They looked at each other with puzzled faces. Kenobewan was about to tell T7 to disengage his clenches and go have a look... and then they started barrel rolling. Everything in the ship that was not fastened crashed against the ceiling, the walls, the floor, and then the ceiling again (yes, even that fine drammasian mirror Doc had bought for this blonde Duchess from Alderaan).

They all yelled, beeped, bellowed. Except for the white-bearded, dark-skinned, middle-age Jedi in the captain's seat.

"Status report!"

"Hull compromised - damage: unknown. Left engine: offline. Right engine: 96% functional. Lateral boosters: damage varies but all functional above 75%. Shields: online, full power", the voice answered, with holos of ship parts apppearing in front of the screen with aurebesh captions. Reading them was not an option, hence the vocal report.

"What's going on?? Did we get hit?!! Any incoming fire??!! EMP blast???"

"Negative. Analyzing... number of offline sensors critical. Unable to diagnose. Manual examination of hull is required."

Kenobewan closed his eyes. Breathing deeply, he let the Force flow through him, calm him, and provide a degree of intuitive certainty in the overwhelming chaos.
He veered the ship upwards and to the left.

"Master! I feel it too!" cried Kira.

The collision alarm pierced the air.

With a roar the Defender shot upwards as the blank whiteness of the blizzard was replaced by grey and white vertical streaks, in a vertiginous blur. They almost cleared the top of the mountain. The deflector shield took the brunt, and the tremendous impact sent debris of jagged rock flying like shrapnel all over the clouds.

Like a throwing dagger, the Defender was sent flying around its axis with a piercing shine. Inside its cockpit everybody was alive, even though the cacophony of a hundred alarms could make anyone wish to die.
Just as Kenobewan managed to steady his ship, most of the rock debris that had shot upwards fell in neat ballistic trajectories into the oblivion of the billowing white sea they had just emerged from. On the other side of the mountain range it was a clear, sunny day over the endless ice plains and snowy hills. They had just escaped a monster of a snowstorm - one enraged by its captivity in a narrow valley.

...

"There", suggested Kira,
"That should do", said Kenobewan.

There was a spot between a bunch of snowy hills that looked good enough to land on and to conceal the ship in, just in case.

With a puff of powdery snow, the red and white Defender landed safely, still dripping, glittering in the winter sun. A small panel slid on top of the ship and a round dish deployed and started scanning, pivoting on its axis. No signs of any settlement, fast-moving objects, communications or anything. No large animals on scans either.

Dressed in white polar clothing, the three humans walked down the ramp of the ship, followed by T7 who had been equipped with tracks and ski-like devices. Doc's face had improved dramatically, only the minutest of lumps visible on his forehead, with a patch on it. The place was thick with silence, characteristic of snowy environments. All that could be heard the soft, fuzzy creaking sound of their steps in the snow, and the occasional heat sink venting heat, blurring the air above it. The powdery snow was two feet deep and it was not easy to walk in. Both Jedi started leaping gracefully instead. They all eyed the ship, doing their best to notice any detail. No blaster impacts alright. That is, no new blaster impacts, and nothing large, outlandish enough to warrant putting a whole engine out of commission. Both the giants exhausts seemed fine.

"Awww, the cannons are fubar!" hollered Doc. Not only had the starboard shoulder of the ship been badly dented, but the twin laser cannons mounted on it were hopelessely bent inwards, as if to fire parallel to the cockpit's windscreen - if anyone was foolish enough to try and fire them. Even with full shields on, the impact with the rock had transfered tons of kinetic energy inwards. Doc shuddered at the idea of what would have happened had the shields failed them too. He was doing his absolute best to avoid thinking that this cold barren place would be the end for old Doc - never to be seen again, buried under millenia worth of snow, forgotten by the galaxy. Only one fact stood between him and utter desperation. The very one thing he liked to taunt droves of imperial troopers with, when, in disbelief, they inevitably fell like flies: "Did you not notice my jedi friend???"

Moments before that hell of a crash, way before the ship's helpless sensors had warned them, too late, of imminent collision, he had seen his jedi friend close his eyes - while flying a ship, mind you, in zero visibility, with all instruments down - and calmly follow who knows what instinct towards salvation. The one way out, and they had taken it. And here they were, walking, unharmed, breathing, pondering, cussing.
Pr. Archiban Kimble had seen it all. He'd seen sages of the Jedi Order close wounds no amount of kolto or bacta would ever close, with their bare hands, emitting blinding light. He'd seen people resist poisoning that would have killed a trandoshan. He'd seen mere padawans batting blaster shots fired at them with their lightsabers. But to have flaming mountains warn you of their presence??? He'd read many a scientific theory of what the Force was, but once you'd seen its hand at work, nothing barely compared to the experience of it. Take all the hypotheses you want and just scrap them. The logical mind alone was out of its depth in some realms.

"But hey, I'm the one who gets to have all the fun, sipping Corellian brandy at a party with a Zeltronette on one side and a Twilekette on the other!" he thought to himself. "Plus, I don't wear a robe, for phrik's sake. Especially not on top of cortosis armor."

Kenobewan leapt on top of the ship, to see the top of the engines, while T7 scanned them underneath. Kira leapt along.

"I can see why the SIS wanted us to give this a shot. A Forcedeaf would be toast. What am I saying? A normal Jedi would be toast."

"Kira..."

"I know, sorry boss. I shall not call non-force users Forcedeafs. I shall not call non-force users Forcedeafs. I'll order my datapad to write it 20 million times... okay, it's just that I am officially freaked out. For all I know if another such blizzard engulfs us while we're in glorified recon, we could lose the other engine and it's game over for good ol'Kira and her Master as we can't call for help..."

"Trust in the Force, my zany apprentice. It has taken us this far."

She opened her mouth in surprise, with a "oh no you didn't" expression, blushing a bit. "I wish you'd stopped calling me that!" she said. He too could be tongue-in-cheek. He smiled. Knowing he could find it in himself to take some of the whole situation lightly, she felt relieved right away. It was soothing. Plus... she liked when he stopped looking at things with eagle eyes - robots, Sith, asteroids - to take a moment to look at her. Those blue eyes... the expression in those deep blue eyes.

"I... I think I love you"

She was about to say it. She could have said it. She was dying to say it.
Of course, a series of overeager beeps and tchirps had to interrupt, just then and there.

"T7 = scanned hull = Durasteel molecules = crunched // Hull has shrunk"

"What??!!" exclaimed the Jedi knight, in unison with the other two.

"Durasteel hull = molecular patterns characteristic of thermal shock"

"I thought Durasteel could take anything you throw at it, including extreme temperature!", a dumbfounded Kenobewan shot back, overlooking the droid from the flat area between the starship's oversized exhausts and the port side escape pod. T7's tracks had drawn neat, orderly trenches in the snow.

"Extreme temperature = yes = constant // But thermal shock = going from one extreme to the other too fast = hull molecules have shrunk = hull itself has shrunk." The beeps were frantic.

"You're right T7, it is strained alright here... oh my! It's burst open right around the engine!", the white-bearded Jedi exclaimed, looking at the juncture between the engines and the superstructure. There was a burnt patch of exposed components there, with the durasteel plating connecting the two parts still fixed on both, but ripped apart in the middle like a mere sheet of paper, strangely wrinkled. Among the burnt parts was a large sheathing filled with, among other things, busted convector cables.

"We should never have flown straight from the Dune Sea to this place", said Kenobewan, irked at his own ignorance ; "The ship was practically melting over there. I guess it did not cool in hyperspace. Blast the SIS and their last-minute requests!"

"Yup. Newsflash!" Doc quipped, mimicking a headlines' holorectangle with his hands, "Infinite Dessication Desert claims Five more victims, 15 000 parsecs away!"

"Yeah... how bout "Imperial Intelligence jubilant as SIS kills five suckers in stoopid experiment", Kira added with her trademark smirk, borrowing Doc's gesture, and eager to brush off the feelings of a moment before.

Kenobewan tried to keep a straight face... and failed miserably. His crew kept their spirits up no matter what, and that mattered more than anything in the world. The trio's giggles escalated into an all-out burst of laughter. A bubble of joy on this sorry planet. Even an overjoyed T7 gave it a try, all the while drawing "8s" in the snow around his masters in some kind of victory dance:

"Doc + Kira = break the ice on Hoth // T7 = crafted a pun"

"Well. Let's take off while we can and get repairs in the space station. The SIS idea to scout a backdoor into Hoth for them to land on the planet away from prying eyes... even without hulls busting open, it would take gree technology to navigate these mad gravitational currents. I guess we'll have to stick with docking at the station, and keep grabbing shuttles to the one region where gravitation is not rabid-Gundark insane. And so will the Imps."

A collective sigh of organic and mechanical relief was let out. They even heard a muffled "Thank the Maker!" from inside the ship. An overjoyed C2 had actually overriden his (now irrelevant) order to deactivate speech, and he would feel guilty about it for quite some time.

"Aaah, I'm so going to enjoy a warm bath on the fleet!" proclaimed Doc as he disappeared into the ship without one last glance at the polar scenery. "And Tionese Sauté!" As his footsteps progressed, he was less and less audible. "With Tarulan Wine!" His voice was but a faint impression by the time it went "Aaaaaauuugh!!! My mirror!!!!!!!"

T7 was climbing up the ramp, but he climbed down and gave the durasteel one last scan. He made excited little beeps. "Durasteel plating bent out of shape = needs repairs or replacing depending on parts = thorough assessment necessary // But durasteel = quenched = increase in sturdiness = interesting"

Taking in the purity of the air, the magnificence of the natural landscape, basking in the Force that had once more laid its protective mantle on their party, Kira and Kenobewan were the last to remain outside, almost knee-deep in the snow.

"Er... Boss", Kira said as they were about to go back into the ship.

Kenobewan turned around, half expecting her to say something he wasn't certain he was prepared to hear.

"Remember on our first time here, how I said that if you mashed Hoth together with Tatooine, maybe it would make a decent planet with nice weather?”

He chuckled. "Yes. Good one."

"Well... let's don't."

He offered a warm laugh this time. He looked at her, beautiful as always, standing straight and slender in an almost military stance, with her arms in her back, smiling, her fiery orange hair providing one tiny speck of life in this monochromatic landscape. "Let's go, my inventive padawan". He turned to board the ship.

"Boss?"

"Yes?", turning once more.

She plastered him in the face with the mother of all snowballs.
"Unless we can bring some of those over there, that is!"

Pandemonium ensued... pandemonium with many a force leap, that is.

The beginning was influenced by Osetto's Among the Stars (Torrid Squadron), among other things his TESSA female computer, which also reminded of Shyrka in a great animated series of my childhood, Ulysses 31. Though you also find that element at the beginning of KOTOR 2 (best intro ever!), or the countdown to self-destruct of the Nostromo in the very first Alien movie. Was definitely influenced by Osetto anyways lol.