He saw them everywhere.

Faceless with his goggles and mouthcloth, the barrel of the rifle in his hands still radiating heat, he could only look at them for a moment before being forced to turn away. He'd never liked the cold, and every fiber of his being wanted to get off this rock, finish this aimless mission.

He never learned why the order had been given. He didn't ask for reasons when the Platoon Sergeant gave it. Others questioned, hestitated, even raged. He watched those with contempt. Orders were orders, and had to be obeyed for the good of the Empire, and its citizens. These targets might have been Imperial citizens, but the order was clear, and had to be followed.

They were a mother and two younglings, staring at him from out of their frost-coated rags. Behind them, hab-blocks smoldered, plumes of smoke drifting upwards and blurring into the storm. The ruins' molten glow was already dimming.

The mother had a hard, thin face, her lips pursed almost into nothing as she stared blindly at him. Her eyes might have been chiseled from rock for their emotion. Her hands were like claws, tangled in the hair of her son in what might have been comfort, or for reassurance that he was still there.

The left youngling, a female with wide brown eyes, had a synth-cloth wrapped tightly around her. Her eyes darted from armoured trooper to armoured trooper, afraid to look at any one for too long. The boy just looked baffled.

Both were trembling, whether from the bitter cold, the armed stormtroopers burning their homes, or both. He never found out which, or what happened to them.

He felt the cold for the rest of the mission, something different and far deeper than even the murderous temperatures of the ice moon. He felt it even after the squad had filed into the shuttle, and left the wastes for their next mission. The cold stayed with him on the ship, in hyperspace, and even in the barracks on Tadath.

It wasn't until the next time bolts started to fly, and the air filled with the scent of ozone, that it left him, and he forgot the way they'd looked at him.

But there are times, times when he sees grey eyes looking at him out of the corner of his eye, or feels a sudden, unexplainable chill, and he sees them again.