Rayn: Stranded on Hoth

[Rayn Ares]

Rayn awoke with the sensation that he was hanging from somewhere. He Opened his eyes and saw dim light filtering through the ice in several places around him.

I must be near the wall of the glacier...

All Around him were Shades of blue's, gray's, and whites. It was difficult at first to regain depth perception. He looked up and realized that he was indeed dangling. His cable gun was affixed to his belt and was extended into a dark fissure in the ceiling. He must have instinctively fired his cable to keep himself from hitting the ice too hard. Apparently it hadn't entirely worked as his head was sore and he had obviously blacked out. He realized that he heard the flow of water. He looked down and saw a small stream below him. Flowing across the tilted floor of the cavern he was in and under the adjacent wall.

So... what to do now...? He thought, I'm stuck here. Even if I get out of this freezing glacier where am I going to go? It's even colder outside...And there's no way off world..I can't just sit here and wait to die though.. What am I supposed to do..?

Rayn recalled some of master Nodan's teachings. The Ithorian had often spoken of the will of the force. How it was constantly shaping events and fate; and how if one listened properly they could hear its flows and let it guide them. Rayn opened himself to the force he completely let himself, his worries, and his thoughts fade away listening only to the swirling of fate around him. Suddenly a thought came to him, as if someone had shoved an idea into his mind.

Cut the cable, it said. And nothing else.

Rayn sat confused for a moment. Cut the cable? Was he meant to die then? He didn't sense that. But what good was dropping into the even more freezing water supposed to do? Would he be frozen in a block of ice and thawed out millions of years from now when Hoth began to develop a more tropical climate? Whatever happened Rayn had little other choice. He would have to trust in the force. Rayn put his hand on his cable gun and hit the cable release. He fell until he splashed into the icy water below.

[Rayn Ares]

Rayn gasped for beath when he came up. He was quickly moving down the slope and would soon be under the ice. He took a deep breath as he finally went beneath the ice and everything went dark again.
He lay for a while, feeling the current move him. Half a minute had passed. Still it was dark. Another half a minute, Rayn was starting to run out of oxygen. He had heard Jedi could put themselves into meditative trances that allowed them to go with minimal oxygen for long periods of time. As Rayn's lungs began to ache, he decided that he should go to learn this skill the first chance he got. Another minute and Rayn couldn't stand it any longer, he began pounding on the ice all around him but nothing would give way. He began swimming down current as fast as he could. Trying to find an opening. He considered going back upstream, but realized that it would take him much longer to get back to the cavern than it had taken to get here, and he needed air now. Finally Rayn could no longer stand it and he let out his breath. Just as quickly as he had let it out, he clamped his hands to his moth and nose, trying to prevent his retracting lungs to suck the water in. He began to feel his head dimming from the lack of oxygen. Water started making it into his mouth and nose and lungs. His lungs were on fire and just when he couldn't stand it any more and was about to resign himself to drowning, something strong lifted him up and he was suddenly out of the water.

Rayn took a deep sharp gasp and then violently retched. He began to vomit and cough out th e water inside him. He was panicking, nearly convulsing, and almost in shock, but it still couldn't repress the overwhelming joy he felt that he had survived. Then he looked up at what had grabbed him. It was a Wampa.
He looked around and saw that the wide cavern was full of wampas. Currently all the one's drinking from the stream had a perplexed look. Some of them looked hungry. The one holding him quickly began to go from confused to instinctively aggressive. It bellowed out and looked as though he were about to tear Rayn limb from limb. Several of the other wampas began to roar excitedly as well.
Suddenly there was a deep, loud roar that silenced all the others. The one holding Rayn suddenly looked shocked. It looked behind Rayn, he followed the wampa's gaze as he did so.

There beside the stream sat the large wampa whom Rayn had tried to protect from Marekis earlier. It issued another deep, sharp command to the wampa holding him and he let him down. As soon as Rayn's feet touched the ice however, his legs buckled beneath him. The exhaustion from earlier along with what had just occured had completely drained him. He could also feel the effects of hypothermia setting in, as he had stopped bothering with his insulation technique for some time now. He heard one more fading bellow as he once again blacked out.

[Rayn Ares]

The next thing Rayn knew, he was suddenly very warm. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but egg shell-white. He sat up and looked around; there were sleeping wampa cubs everywhere. He looked down at the fur around him and followed it up, surprised to find that he was in the arms of a female wampa. When it saw that he was awake it let our a soft, low growl. Then it looked up behind him and let out short cry. When Rayn turned around again he saw the same one-armed wampa from before entering the den.

The wampa stopped before Rayn and gave a low questioning growl.

"I'm sorry that I caused you some discomfort before. I was trying my best to make sure you and your brethren weren't killed." Rayn tried to use the force to project his helpful sentiment as much as he could. He then stepped toward the wampa who gave a quick, warning bark, but Rayn continued slowly till he was touching the wampa's arm. He did his best to project his thoughts of trying to protect them from Marekis. Hopefully he would be able to pick up some sense of that.

"I was just trying to help.." he softly said again.

The wampa looked reflective for a moment, then it looked down at Rayn and gave a short, gruff growl before nodding its head slightly.

Relieved that he seemed to be understood he then changed his thoughts to those in need of help.
"Please, if you know of anyway I can get off of this planet it would be greatly appreciated. I have nowhere else I can go."

The wampa merely tilted its head and continued to stare at him inquisitively.
Rayn tried a different approach. " Is there anything..anyone else here.. that is not from this world?"
It seemed to consider this thought for a moment, then it turned and gestured with it shoulders to follow. As Rayn began walking however, his legs failed him again. He saw his sword in the ice next to him and used it ti prop himself up. Now that the cold was not numbing him he could feel aching pain all over his body. This did not come as a surprise to him whatsoever and he wondered in amazement how he had managed to survive for this long.
The one-armed wampa turned toward Rayn as he saw him struggling, and hoisted him up onto his shoulder.
"Oh!..Um.. thank you," he said, surprised by the sudden lift.

The wampa or One-arm, as Rayn now thought of him walked them down through the dark caverns of the glacier. Finally he stopped in a chamber that was just barely visible, it took his eyes several moments to adjust to completely see the inside.
The chamber was small ad more or less a domed in shape. The only thing that stood out was a large protrusion at the end. One-arm brought him over to the bulge in the ice and set him down next to it. He squinted to get a better look at it. It was wide, angular and didn't seem to be a natural ice formation at all. He began knocking it in places and stopped when he heard a metallic sound.

A starship?! he thought excitedly. If the cockpit was intact and it had an long range comm transmitter, then maybe he could get help. He climbed up onto the half buried vessel and began knocking around again. When he heard the delicate tink of transparisteel he smiled. He raised his beskad and swung it down as hard as he could, One-arm letting out a cry of surprise as the canopy shattered.
Rayn opened one of his belt pouches and pulled out a lightrod. He activated and looked around the cockpit. It was small and had two seats, one facing the opposite direction. He searched around the controls and his hope began to fade as he realized that this was an atmospheric vessel. Seeing the archaic symbol of the galactic republic, or the "rebellion", as it had been during that particular era, Rayn realized that this must have been one of the rebellion's 'snowspeeders', adapted from ordinary cargo speeders and used during the famous historical 'Battle of Hoth'.
Before his hope completely slipped away however, another idea came. He tried to activate any of the systems, but the power must have run dry long, long ago. Not giving up he took out his datapad and plugged it into the main console. To his extreme satisfaction the speeder's files seemed to be completely intact and after searching around he found what he was looking for- a file labled 'Echo Base'. He downloaded this file along with geographical information on the planet. Then, checking the map, he saw that the ancient stronghold was only a few kilometers from his current location. Of course.. a few kilometers on
Hoth would likely prove to be 10 times the challenge than it would normally be...
Still, there was now hope and he was going to grasp it. He had to complete his journey and that meant getting off world...and somehow getting his ship back...it was still on Coruscant and it still had the coordinates for his journey, as well as his master's puzzle cube in it.
Before leaving the speeder he searched around and found a large emergency supply box under the co-pilot's seat. Hims arms strained from fatigue as he lifted it out of the speeder. He now had his plan, but it was obvious that he was in no condition to make the trip as he was now.
He looked up at one-arm and smiled awkwardly, " I hope you don't mind if I stay a bit longer."

[Rayn Ares]

Rayn stood several meters from the entrance to the cavern. A slight icy breeze past bitterly against his face as he stared out into the white wastes. He had spent the last day and a half keeping warm, stretching out his aches and pains, and building back his strength by eating the, over 500 year old, military rations (Which weren't at all as horrible as that sounded) from the emergency supply crate. He had been able to charge his datapad with the power that was left his blaster's power pack, but now the only useable projectile weapon he had was a flare gun with one flare that he had found in the emergency supplies. Fortunateley there had also been a thick, white emergency thermal blanket in the pack, which he was now wearing as a makeshift cloak.
He was all ready to head out, but before he did he turned around. One-arm and one of his cubs were standing there. They had just come back from what Rayn figured was a hunting lesson. Both of them had Tauntaun blood splattered across the front of their scruffy coats. One-arm had a satisfied look about him, watching as his cub bravely growled and pawed at the body of their long dead prey. He then looked at Rayn and took a few steps forward.

"Thank you for all of your help. I don't think I would have survived otherwise." he said graciously. He knew the wampa couldn't understand him, but he let the gratitude he was feeling permeate in the force around him. The wampa straitened its posture and tilted its head up slightly in a very proud look, giving what seemed to Rayn to be the equivalent of a wampa smile. Rayn smiled himself and bowed. With that he turned and drew his hood. Bracing himself for the biting cold as he walked out into the frozen plains.




Rayn walked on for at least two and a half hours after he had left the cave, changing pace only when he consulted his map every 15 minutes or so to make sure he was staying on course. It was a rather calm day so far. There was only a slight breeze that, while still extremely frigid, could not hold a candle to the immense snow storms that were so common on this world. He walked at a fair pace, but tried not too exert himself too much so that he could save his strength. He was now a bit more than half way to Echo Base.
He still had a couple hours left to walk, but he was not bored by the stillness of everything, he rather found it to be very soothing and he enjoyed looking around at all the protrusions and giant spires of ice that jutted up in contrast of the rest of the landscape around him.

As he continued his trek he started thinking about what he needed to do next. He had gone to the Coruscant enclave and become more familiar with the force as well as with the ancient Jedi combat forms. That was the first place he had been sent to visit; it had been marked by a blue waypoint marker on the star chart coordinates his master had given him. The next place he was supposed to go to had been marked by a green marker, he remembered because he had been planning on going there after he had gotten off of Coruscant. Suddenly remembering this he grew troubled.

But why would he possibly want me to go t-

Rayn's thoughts were suddenly interupted when the ground beneath him started to shake violently. Rayn wobbled as he tried to maintain his balance. Then there was a thunderous horrifying crack as the ice beneath him, that had to be at least a quarter of a kilometer thick, began to split. He rolled down one side as the two sides of the crack rose up and a gigantic spray of water came up from beneath. Rayn was now on his feet and running down the slope, his eyes widening as he saw an already freezing tidal wave flood down after him.

Rayn had heard how the ocean beneath the frozen surface of Hoth would sometimes spurt out due shifts and tremors caused by the strong pull of its moons, he thought he had even heard some in the distance on the way over, but he did not anticipate that he would be caught right in the middle of one. The tremor was still causing the ice to shake and as it did Rayn lost his footing and began sliding down uncontrollably. As fast as he was going though, the water was much faster and quickly gaining on him. He looked around desperately and saw a small spire sticking out farther down the slope. He angled himself toward it and slammed against it hard when he reached it.

Now as the water was moments from him, his mind racing, he pulled out the flare gun and fired at the base of the spire. The flare took a sizable chunk out of the ice and Rayn heard it crack and whine. When the water hit the spire it snapped off with a swift cracking sound. Now he was holding on tightly as the water carried the spire down the slope.When he finally hit the bottom some of the water splashed in his face, jolting his senses. The water continued to sweep across the ground however and the chunk of ice he rode was not yet losing its momentum. Then just as suddenly as everything else that had occurred, the spire went up another slab of ice that had come lose from the tremor and went off it like a ramp.

Suddenly Rayn was in the air and flying over the now still plains. It didn't last however and the spire quickly began to fall. It impacted as he reached a hill that was rising out from the snow and Rayn was launched off. He hit the snow hard, but started rolling as he fell down the other side of the hill. Finally he came to an abrupt stop as he plowed into a snowbank at the bottom of the hill.

Rayn lay there, face up in the impression he had made in the snow. Thanks to the snow everywhere he felt more or less uninjured, though his heart was still pounding.

"Well now....who says Hoth isn't exciting?" he said, grinning awkwardly to himself while his eyes were still wide.

After a few moments he propped himself up and looked around. To his pleasant surprise he saw what looked like a giant and ancient planetary shield generator. And adjacent to that was a large, dark indentation in a hill. Echo Base.

"What do you know...I must have been closer than I thought."

Satisfied and now in good humor from that exciting experience, Rayn headed towards the hill.

[Rayn Ares]

When he reached the main entrance he saw that the blast doors were stuck half open. The opening was probably big enough for a small star fighter to come in through, Rayn didn't think much of it however and continued on into the base. He looked around in the dim light. It was large in here and could probably fit several ships in, what looked to like a service area.

He saw a console to the right and walked over to it. It looked like the hangar control pannel. Just like the snowspeeder however it was completely powered down. Rayn opened up a panel in the side and plugged in his datapad. The console menu came up in miniature on his screen. He knew that without power none of the systems would work, but he looked through the information. Maybe he could find out if there was a hypercomm transmitter somewhere on the base. Maybe he could find some old power cells and get it online. Though he wasn't sure who he could get a hold of... He only had the personal comlink codes of Lents and Skeang on his datapad. He had never downloaded either of their ship transponder codes of of his own fighter's console. And he would not be able to contact thier comlinks from all the way out here..

Still, there had to be something he could do. After a brief look at the system maintenance log Rayn was surprised to find that there had still been some residual power in the base not too long ago. While looking through a few of the updates a flashing alert on one of the files caught his attention. It was the automated vessel scanner, it was saying that it had picked up an unauthorized entry. He opened the docking manifest and looked at the first ID on the list. It was the code for an old Y-wing. And it was registered to Eth Erzin.

"What!?" Rayn stared, shocked. Eth Erzin was the alias that Lents had gone by when he had first met him. "Lents...What were you doing here.....?"

Rayn downloaded the transponder codes. The ship obviously wasn't Lents' anymore, as he currently piloted a Decimator, but maybe he could find a way to contact him.

Rayn then pulled out his glow rod continued down to the tunnels, his head now spinning with this knowledge. Why would Lents come here to Hoth? Was it a coincidence that the Sith Lord had brought him here? Lents seemed to have met the Chiss man before...could Lents have been working with him?

As he was walking he saw an open door in one of the corridors. He touched the door as he walked in and saw an image of Lents, shivering, and pulling the door open.

So it really was him...

Rayn quickly scanned the room and found an open footlocker by the bed; he knelt down and slowly touched his hand to the bottom. He quickly pulled his hand away as he felt a jolt as though he had just touched an electric surface. He saw Lents putting a metallic cube into the locker. He also saw the Sith Lord taking the cube out. Rayn wasn't sure what the cube was, but it was powerful. Just feeling the residual traces with his psychometry had been enough to feel the energy.

"So that's what he came here for..." he siad in a low tone, furrowing his brow in thought, "I've got a bad feeling about all this..."

Seeing all that he needed to, Rayn left the room and continued searching the corridors. After several minutes he finally found what looked like the communications center. It was filled wall to wall with all sorts of outdated technology. He looked around a bit more and finally found a hypercomm transmitter. He plugged his datapad into it, hoping to be able to start it up with the power left on it. His eyes lit up as the screen came online.

He probably wouldn't have long with just the charge from his datapad. He quickly entered in the transponder frequency and tried to hail the Y-Wing.

"Hello?" he spoke into the mic,"Hello? is anyone there?"

Rayn waited several moments and then tried again, "Hello? Can anyone hear this?"

"Achuta?Who the is this?" a gruff voice with a Nal Huttan accent answered.

"Hello! Does this ship belong to Eth Erzin? Is he around?"

"I don' know who' ship this is. Someone just salvaged it and sol' it to me. I was just 'bout to wipe the memory when you call." the man paused for a moment, "Erzin huh...? Oh yeah. I know. He buy old Decimator from us couple months ago. Pay good creds."

"Thats great! You have the comm codes for his ship then?" he asked.

"Listen, I have no idea who you a'. I can't just give out patron info'mation like that...unless your willing to pay for i'?" he asked, now with a cloying, deal making tone.

Rayn sighed, he keyed in some commands to open up the emergeny funds account that had belonged to his master and sent half of what was left in it.

"Will this be enough?"


"Hmm..." the comm was silent for a few moments, "Alright, is a deal."

Rayn heard a few beeping noises. "Okay sendin' you the codes now."

He smiled, " Thank you very much."

"Yeah, yeah. Jes don't bother me again alrigh?", and with that he cut the transmission.


Finally he entered the codes for the Illuminant Rush into the comm and hoped Lents would be there.

"Come in Illuminant Rush. Lents, this is Rayn. Are you there?"

[Rayn Ares]

For transmission, please refer to => 550aby.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=maw&action=display&thread=153&page=3

[Rayn Ares]

Excellent! I'll see you soon enough my friend.

With Odotta's comm codes now in his possession Rayn took a moment to think about how he would approach this situation. He needed Odotta's ship in order to house his Bes'uliik and look after it while Rayn went about his buisness. However...Rayn wasn't sure if he currently had the funds to pay Odotta...

Rayn only knew the account number of his master's emergency fund. He would have to: find the coordinates to the firm to his master's main account in his ship, hope Rayn would be permitted to access it, and then hope there were enough funds to pay the chevin for this job.
Currency is such a troublesome thing...

The thing is, Rayn didn't really know anyone. He had met many warriors, civilians, and various other beings throughout his life training, but he had never had the time for much social interaction, never really had the chance to get to know anyone. His master had been the one who had contacts and necessary people needed to keep track of his small finances, ship repair, and probably various other tasks that Rayn was unaware of.

Now, here stranded on this remote world with little power left to make off-world transmissions, it wasn't as though he could simply look through local holo-ads either. He couldn't bother Lents right now, but at least he and Skeang knew where he was in case this didn't work out.

With his plan in mind he proceeded to dial up Odotta.

[Rayn Ares]

For transmission please refer to => 550aby.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=midspace&action=display&thread=179&page=1

[Rayn Ares]

Ending communications with Odatta, Rayn quickly powered down and put away his datapad.

"This has been some trip." Rayn said humorously," Glad I can finally get out of here...Of course...its just a matter of time till I get thrown into another crazy situation. I guess I'll enjoy the freezing, frigid peace while I can."

With that Rayn set off deep into the corridors of the base to find more centuries old military rations and a LOT of blankets.

[Odottaa]

Odottaa arrived on the planet and landed outside of what used to be Echo Base. This is where the coordinates Rayn gave him were, so it must be the right place. He walked out of the ship and was greeted by a blast of icy wind. Luckily his thick stature and skin protected him a little from it. He ran down the ramp and into a small opening in the destroyed doors of the base hoping to find Rayn somewhere.

[Rayn Ares]

Rayn stood wrapped in the white thermal cloak. He had been waiting by the entrance for Odotta to arrive for about an hour now. He greeted the chevin as he arrived.

"Odotta! Its good to finally see you again. How have you been?"

[Odottaa]

Odottaa was happy to see the kid was mostly unharmed and had survived the planet somehow.

"I've definitely been better. Been stuck on Kashyyk with all those jedi that evacuated from Coruscant. All of them that can so much as lift a pebble have been trying to recruit me into their backwards religion to get a gold star from their masters... But enough about me. How in the galaxy did you manage to escape that sith?"

[Rayn Ares]

Ryan furrowed his brow in thought, "I'm not entirely sure myself...you see, the Sith Lord wanted to use me to test the skills of his apprentice, that fierrero, Marekis. I really didnt want our fight to become a death match, both because I dont like to kill and even if I had defeated him I would still have to answer to his master. So I managed to escape into a glacier ravine that I...accessed.....The thing is...the Sith Lord could have easily prevented me from escaping...my only guess is that he figured I wasn't worth the trouble and just left me to die." Rayn shrugged, dropping the subject," So the Jedi from Coruscant all made it safely to Kashyyyk? Thats good. Well, I'm ready to leave whenever you are."

[Odottaa]

"Well safe is a very relative term... I will explain more when we get of this giant glacier."

Odottaa ran back out and onto his ship and started prepping the ship for take off while he waited for rayn to get any supplies or things he found that he wanted to bring with him.

[Rayn Ares]

Having no reason to stay here any longer, Rayn boarded Odotta's ship.

"Alright, first of all we'll need to head back to Coruscant. I need to retrieve my ship. Were you able to get off world without being identified? Otherwise we may have trouble planetary security."

[Odottaa]

"I didn't have a problem last time getting off of coruscant, so I'm not too worried about it. You may want to strap in, you have a lot of things to hear about..."

Odottaa had prepared the ship for take off and steered towards the upper atmosphere to make the jump.

[Rayn Ares]

Rayn secured himself in his seat.
"What kind of things...?" Rayn said warily.

[Odottaa]

OOC: moved to 550aby.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=westspace&thread=196