#Prepare for sooooo many chapter title in-jokes and hints

[corellianhounds]

Call Sign

Art by @miranhas-art

This is one of few stories where I know exactly what’s supposed to happen and how it’s going to end so I’m able to indulge in art ahead of time 😌 Mari did an incredible job and I love her work 💕

Barton IV was a harsh and unforgiving planet, inhospitable everywhere except beneath the ice, if you could get there. The population was about one sentient per square hectare which made for very few towns and even fewer neighbors. The Vulture’s Spine made up a large portion of the mountain range in the fifth quadrant of the northern hemisphere, named so for the long, ridgelike peaks stretching and winding for miles and inhabited by ice vultures. How the vultures found enough carrion to sustain themselves, no one knew, but locals expected they cannibalized their own once they fell. Their feathers were as thin and razor sharp as the mountain faces, the mountains themselves built of brittle shale and hardened, subzero ice.

It was there that the Empire saw fit to plant Commander Mayday’s crew and tell them to keep watch over the supply depot, so keep watch they did. Outside of fending off raiders from time to time there was precious little to do besides repair equipment (damaged from the cold), maintain the fence and weaponry (faulty and unreliable from the cold), and try to stay warm (due to the aforementioned cold). Some days it was hard to even see the sky, thick clouds and flurries eliminating any scrap of warmth or sunlight they might have had, and the longer time went on, the harder it was to differentiate between day and night anyway.

They didn’t know how long they’d been there before the freighter crashed.

— Chapter 1, “Icebreaker”