Lents' Detour

[Eth Erzin]

Day 2

Lents had spent a day and a night in hyperspace traveling a very circuitous route through the galaxy from Coruscant to Hoth. After wondering about the best place to hide the mysterious cube given to him by the equally mysterious Chiss man, Lents settled on the ice planet Hoth due to its relative obscurity, nonexistent population, and as an homage to the old Rebel alliance which had taken up a temporary base there. After exiting hyperspace, Lents realized that he didn't know whether his old Y-wing could stand the cold. He decided to land at the ancient and decrepit Rebel base where the temperature reached a relatively warm -30 degrees Celsius.
He touched down and opened the hatch to be blasted with the frigid air. Even in the daytime it was cold as night. Lents quickly darted back into the cabin and closed the hatch, face turning even bluer than the Omwati norm from the few seconds he had spent outside. He started up his Y-wing again and brought it into the base and used the external sensors to find any chance of sealing up the hangar. There was none but there were old tunnels heading deeper into the base, where if he was lucky, he would be able to find a warm room and a place to hide the cube.
Gently nudging the Y-wing towards the tunnel from the hangar to the rest of the base, Lents pulled the emergency blanket and emergency rations from the safety kit and wrapped himself tightly in the blanket's warm folds, while pocketing the rations, just in case. Mentally preparing himself, he opened the hatch, bolted outside, sealed it, then sprinted as fast as he could down the hallway, in search of a still-working door that could seal off the cold.

[Eth Erzin]

He hurried down the hall, the icy cold seeping through the blankets ever more with each passing minute. At every door he slammed his palm against the lock to see if the device worked, although he doubted if he was authorized to access any door, even though the Rebellion had hidden here over five hundred years ago.
But alas none of the doors seemed to work. Regardless, he hurried on, realizing that by now he had gone too far. If he turned around and tried to get back to his old but warm Y-wing, the cold would catch him first. Frightened at the prospect of his death, but in a surreal way blocking out the blind panic he knew should be overtaking his body, Lents continued deeper and deeper into the base.
As he rounded a corner and was simultaneously relieved and dismayed to see a long hallway with several doors on each side, he noticed that further down, the freezing snow of Hoth had ceased to penetrate into the facility. But that didn't mean it wasn't cold. He started running full-tilt down the hallway, giving each door just a brief moment before passing on to the next door, and just as he had about to give up and succumb to the frigid ice crawling into his bones, he saw a generator tucked away in an alcove situated at the corner of another right-angle in the hallway's layout. He rushed over and slid to his knees as he neared it. It was old, but retained the same basic mechanism as modern-day generators.
Working at the different angles and components, Lents was able to get it working, and noticed on the readout it said [8%power][standard_decrease_.001%/minute]. Quickly running some calculations through his head, Lents realized the generator would work for 800 standard minutes, 133 standard hours and 20 standard minutes, or roughly 5 and a half days.
"Not much of a generator if it can't generate energy. Guess it's just using the reserves remaining after 500 years." Lents was annoyed, but impressed. He didn't expect that much remaining storage power after so long, "...and beggars can't be choosers." he reasoned. Looking around, he saw the power was flowing through all the doors in this short segment of the hallway. He ducked inside the first door he saw and entered long-abandoned quarters. It was cold, but definitely warmer than outside. He cast off his blankets and shook his arms and legs, getting the blood flowing to his extremities again.
Looking around the meager furnishings of the room, Lents hid the mysterious cube in a battered foot locker and reprogrammed the footlocker's code so that only he could open it, just as an extra precaution.
Still recovering from the shock of staying so long in the cold, Lents grabbed up the blankets and wrapped them tightly around him like a cocoon, then collapsed on the cot, falling asleep before his head hit the soft pillow.

[Eth Erzin]

When Lents awoke he worried that he may have slept for a hundred years, then shook his head and cleared his thoughts of the fragments of dreams, both pleasant and scary, of Jedi and Sith. The room was definitely cold, but survivable. He estimated maybe between 5 and 15 celsius degrees. He double-checked the foot locker and made sure the cube was still there, then palmed the door open, bracing himself for the inevitable blast of frigidity.
He squinted his eyes at the cold, then ran to the generator across the hallway to see how much energy remained. The readout displayed [7.4%power][standard_decrease_.008%/minute]. Lents realized that the cold must be seeping away the power to the generator, causing the energy loss to have octupled while he was asleep. Estimating an average of .0045% loss per minute and losing .6% total power, Lents calculated that he had been asleep for just over two hours. At least he hadn't slept for that long.
He switched off the generator, pulling the energy pack out of the slot so that he could recharge it if he found a compatible station. He also reasoned that even if he couldn't, the relative heat of his Y-wing would result in less energy loss than if he left it in the cold.
Sprinting down the hallways, Lents reached the open air, puffing clouds of hot breath. It looked like he was exhaling his very life force, of which he realized was actually true. Quickly opening the cockpit, Lents slid into the pilot's seat of the Y-wing and activated the heater, turning it all the way up. Flicking the switch on, Lents' ship rose a few feet into the air, and he flew out of the derelict hangar and out of the unfriendly atmosphere of Hoth into the void of space.