Chapter IV: Of Ice, Snow, and Lonely Tauntauns
On the barren ice planet of Hoth, a lone, deserted Rebel base still stood. It had become overrun by the elements during the years since the generator had been destroyed by the Empire's attack. Huge icicles hung from every available surface, and a stubborn dry, brown grass grew slowly in the very center of the base where the ice had not fully taken over. The small, furry rodents that managed to inhabit this abandoned structure skittered away in alarm as the hollow echo of strange footfalls and the hum of mechanical wheels sounded throughout the building.
"Honestly, I don't know why you wanted to come here!" One set of footprints said to the other.
The other form sighed, a fine white mist shooting forming with it, "I thought you wanted to hit all of Luke's old haunts, and this seemed as fitting as any."
"It didn't help that your piloting nearly killed us on impact." The form with wheels beeped and hooted in agreement.
"Hey! I don't think you would've seen that snowdrift any quicker than I did! I actually saved the ship."
"Whatever," Katie said as she picked her way through large chunks of ice that had fallen on the floor, trying not to slip anymore than she had to. Pulling her thick parka around her tighter and adjusted her fur-lined hood, she tried to take her mind of the cold. R2-D2 had joined them on the ship, neither of them realizing he came with Luke's X-Wing until he had beeped at them in the cockpit, frightening both girls to no end. He now followed smoothly behind Katie, who was making a small trail through the debris he could roll through easily.
Mary, on the other hand, was slowly falling in love with her surroundings. "Don't you just love the snow?" she asked as she twirled and danced in her shiny surroundings.
"It's not snow, Mary, it's ice. Not nearly as fun," Katie grumbled.
Mary shrugged and skipped off in another direction, heading for the middle of the compound, "Well, snow or not, I'm gonna head for the hangar bay and check it out. We can split up if you want, my communicator's fully charged."
Katie looked to a locked door on her right, a large sign reading 'DETENTION LEVEL' hanging on rusty hinges adorned the metal plating. "I think I'll check this out!" she shouted at Mary, who had already ambled out of her line of site. I've gotta keep a leash on her or something, Katie thought to herself, not unkindly.
Noticing the door was frozen shut with ice and age, Katie quickly snapped it open with a small nudge of the Force. R2 twittered and beeped happily and rolled slowly into the hallway. Smiling to herself, Katie entered cautiously, observing her surroundings. She was in a long corridor whose sides were dotted randomly with metal doors, all of which had been long since rusted shut from the ice caked on the walls. Pulling her hood closer around her face, Katie began walking slowly down the corridor, pausing to scrape ice off some of the windows to peak into random cells. She was getting slightly more nauseous by the minute, because some of the cells contained what looked to be skeletons, and not all of them appeared to be human.
Katie grimaced, "Of course… I bet the Imperials took over this base and kept whatever Rebel survivors in these cells." They didn't seem to care too much about their prisoners… she thought sadly as she noticed several more skeletons. She walked down the corridor further, and just as she decided she should go find Mary, she noticed something that stopped her heart for a moment. At the end of the corridor, the ice had been carefully scraped from a cell door, and the entry controls were still blinking slowly, indicating they were functioning. This cell has been recently used! Katie thought, But who was kept here? She motioned to R2 who activated the door and stepped into the tiny room, and, just as she expected, the room had been recently emptied of ice and debris. The tiny bunk in the room had a relatively clean blanket lying over it, and a dented food tray sat, forgotten, in the corner. R2-D2 made a small, frightened noise, as if to say, 'This can't be good.'
Katie nodded, "I think I'm beginning to agree with you. She quickly backtracked, trying to find Mary. She didn't notice the small, red eyes that watched her run down the hallway, or how the smile under those eyes contained long, yellow fangs.
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Mary hadn't gotten very far. Wandering through the compound she had finally managed to get herself lost, which was not where she had originally planned to go. Finally, she realized where she was. She was standing the communications room, looking just like it did in the movie. Striding over to some high-tech equipment, Mary tried to look like she knew what she was doing. Pressing random buttons, she managed to start the large machine. Activating a screen that said, 'Call Archive' on accident, she looked shocked at what she saw.
If Mary was reading this correctly, someone had sent a communication from this exact spot no less than three weeks ago. "This place is supposed to be abandoned," she said to herself softly, "maybe I wasn't so foolhardy in coming here after all."
Just as she was about to grab her communicator and tell Katie what she had discovered, the small machine crackled to life on its own, "Mary? Can you read me?"
Mary smiled, "Loud 'n clear, Captain Commando, what's shaking?"
Katie spoke very quickly, and Mary strained to understand, "I think someone's been here recently. I found a cell in the detention level that had been recently used! Someone had been held captive here!"
"Well," Mary replied, "I just found out that someone sent a communication from this base a couple weeks ago, but I have yet to find out who or what they were trying to…" she trailed off, having heard someone talking in the distance. She strained to listen, and it seemed it was more than one speaker. Being of short attention span, she began walking in the direction of the voices.
"Mary? Are you still there?" came Katie's worried voice over the small speaker.
"Yeah, I'm okay," said Mary, "I just heard voices and wanna go check it out."
"Voices? Mary, honestly, I don't think…" but Mary was too intrigued by this new discovery to pay much attention to her friend. Walking through the echoing hallways, she was finding it difficult to keep track of where the voices were coming from, but she soon found herself in the huge hangar bay. This room contained whatever it was that was talking to her.
Mary walked cautiously into the room, her hand hovering over her lightsaber. She wasn't sure she was ready to use it and unleash its red-tinted fury, but she would rather be safe than sorry. Turning the corner around a large stack of containers, she dropped her hand and laughed to herself for being so uptight. Standing in the middle of the hangar bay, softly munching of the poor excuse for grass, was a small herd of tauntauns. Mary smiled and quickly walked up to the one closest to her, but as soon as the tauntauns registered her presence, they fled to the far side of the hangar.
"Hey, wait!" Mary called after them. To her surprise, the biggest one, which Mary assumed to be the leader, stopped and turned to look in her direction. Slowly and carefully, it walked back over to the girl, who held out her hand, palm up. The creature set its large nose in the small hand and sniffed at it for what seemed like an eternity to Mary.
Mary gathered up her courage and reached up to pet the tauntaun behind the ears, something she was capable of only because the large creature had bent its great neck down considerably. "Hey, big fella," she whispered, trying not to scare it away again.
"Hello, Mary."
Mary jumped, looking around frantically, trying to figure out who had said that. The tauntaun had begun nudging her shoulder with one of its great horns worriedly, and Mary realized with another jump that it had been the tauntaun talking to her. She looked into the eyes of the large animal, and saw a deep glint of intelligence there.
Mary cleared her throat, "Hello there, um… sir. I wasn't aware that you could…"
"Talk?" the tauntaun finished for her.
"Um… yeah," Mary replied, noticing that the rest of the tauntauns were quickly returning, emboldened by their leader's acceptance of this stranger. Mary made a quick head count, coming to a total of twelve tauntauns before she turned back to the one that had addressed her, "So, how did you know my name?"
"We know the names of all who can speak to us; it is the way of things." Mary noticed the tauntaun giving her what she assumed passed for a smile.
"That means most people can't talk to you?" Mary asked.
The tauntaun snorted, "Most people can't, and those who can don't even care for us tauntauns. It has been a great while since I had met someone to talk to that was remotely pleasant."
Mary smiled at the compliment, "So, do any of you have names?"
The great animal shook his head, which was alarming because of his great horns that circled his long ears, "No, none of us were ever named. I am the only one among us that was ever ridden by a human, but he didn't take the time to name me. That was many years ago, when this base was full of people all the time. Now, we just get the occasional visitor, although it has been relatively busy this past month."
"Well, I could name you!" Mary said, hoping to come back to the subject of the other recent visitors later. She looked at the tauntauns in deep thought, noticing the females had smaller, horns that were straighter than the males and that the younger ones also had these horns, so she needn't worry about gender mixing. Not like they would know if I did, she thought lightly.
"Okay," she began, "You can be Trixie, you can be Thomas, you can be Travis, you can me Tiffany, you can be Tucker…" she went on like that, thinking herself very clever for giving all the tauntauns names that started with a 'T.' She finally came back to the leader and paused for thought. She had long since ran out of decent 'T' names, and had actually named two of the other tauntauns 'Toboggan' and 'Tea Kettle.' She decided to actually give the leader a passable name, and she thought hard. "I know!" she finally said, "You can be Tongo!"
Tongo gave her the tauntaun smile again, "Yes, these are all fine names, thank you Mary."
Mary was about to pursue the subject of the other people that had come to the base before them, when Katie herself walked into the hangar bay with R2 tooting loudly at the sight of Mary, scaring off the tauntauns for the second time, leaving Mary alone with a worried-looking Tongo.
"Mary? Are you okay? I've been trying to get you on the communicator for ages!" Katie said, walking up to her friend.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Hey, this is my friend, Tongo," Mary said, gesturing to the tauntaun next to her, who had calmed down visibly since Mary deemed Katie as a friend, turning to Tongo, she said, "Tongo, this is my friend, Katie."
Katie looked to the tauntaun, "Nice to meet you." She them turned on her friend, "What was that second thing you said?"
"What thing?" Mary asked.
Tongo leaned over to Mary, "I can't understand what this 'Katie' said. She is not one of those who can speak to us."
"Aww… that's sad, I was hoping you guys could be friends," Mary said to the tauntaun.
"There! You said it again!" Katie said quickly.
"What?" Mary asked, extremely confused now.
"Whenever you talk to the tauntaun, or, Tongo… you're using a different language! Do you honestly not know it?" Katie's eyes grew wide, "Of course you don't know! You have a Jedi gift! Mary, you're so lucky!"
Mary thought about it for a moment, and she realized she had been talking strangely to the tauntauns. It had seemed perfectly normal at the time, but now she began to recognize the strange, rushed syllables and odd accentuation that must be this 'gift' Katie was talking about. "So, what does this mean?" Mary asked her friend.
"I guess you can communicate with animals; I bet tauntauns aren't the only ones. This is the same gift that Jacen has!" Katie said, looking a little upset.
Mary understood at once, "Katie, it's okay. I'm sure you have some awesome Jedi skill that I suck at, and I bet it kicks the snot outta mine. I mean, honestly, you can already understand most of what Artoo says without the translator."
Katie smiled, "Whatever you say. So, did the tauntauns say anything interesting?"
Mary looked around and noticed the rest of the tauntauns had eagerly returned. "Lemme check," she said quickly, "They said some other people had been here recently, and I was gonna check for a description."
Mary looked to Tongo and the rest of the tauntauns, "I heard you mention something about visitors coming here recently, would you care to tell me about them?"
Travis walked up to her, having been given leeway by Tongo in the way of a small nod, "Well, about a couple months ago, two people had arrived here, although we couldn't get a good visual of either of them. Our… instincts told us to stay away."
"Instincts?" Mary asked.
Tongo took up this one, "We tauntauns, and most animals, I understand, are able to sense whether people's ambition are for good or evil. We felt negative emotions from one of these people, so we stayed hidden away from both of them."
"Interesting," Mary mumbled, and quickly translated it what had been said for Katie's benefit.
"Well, ask if they have seen anyone else sense then," Katie replied, after hearing the whole story.
Mary quickly put forward the question, and a younger tauntaun, Toboggan, by the look of it, walked forward. "No less than a month ago, another man came to the base, but this was long after the first two had left. He seemed a lot nicer than the others, so we greeted him when he came to the base."
"He was really nice!" said the young female tauntaun named Trixie, "He gave us some food and everything! I hadn't had a decent chunk of bread in years! He also left us a few blankets, which was nice because even we tauntauns can feel the chill after a while." Trixie shook her fur coat and offered the smile Mary had begun to recognize from the tauntauns.
Mary smiled at her kid-like comments, "Yes, that's awesome for you, but what did he look like?"
"Um…" Trixie said, thinking very hard.
"Oh, I know!" Toboggan blurt out, trying to please the new person, "He was about this tall," he stretched his nose upward to what Mary guessed to be about six feet, "And he had hair the color of dried mud. He also wore all black, just like her!" On the last word, he shoved his nose in Katie's direction.
Mary's heart was racing, "Did he carry something like this?" she asked, holding out her lightsaber.
Toboggan sniffed it quickly and crumpled his nose, "Yeah, I think so, although his smelled a little… better."
Mary quickly reattached her lightsaber to her belt; I bet his would smell better. She quickly turned to Katie, "It was him! It was Luke for sure! They identified his clothes like yours and the fact that he had a lightsaber. He was also way nice to them, which most people wouldn't be from the sounds of it."
"That's great!" Katie said, "And to think, I thought the idea of coming to Hoth was nuts! How lucky is that! We found Luke's trail on the first try, and it's only a month old! I'd almost call that a Jedi gift in itself."
"Do you want to go check out the communication then? I couldn't quite figure out how to tell who was talking to who, although I guess Luke must've been using it now. I got to the screen at all on accident," Mary asked.
Katie nodded, "Sure, we can check it out. I bet Artoo can find the source in a minute." R2 blurted something that sounded offended. Katie rolled her eyes, "Fine, Artoo can do it in few seconds, tops." Artoo beeped happily as he headed for the control room.
"Okay, just hang on a minute," Mary quickly turned to Tongo and the other tauntauns, quickly explaining who the man was that they met and why Katie and herself were looking for him. The nodded thoughtfully throughout the story and Mary was pleased to have such an interested audience.
"So, you can see why I'll have to be leaving in a little while. I'm very sorry I couldn't hang out with you guys more, it's been way fun," she finished, hoping not to make the tauntauns upset. They had seemed to happy to have someone to talk to.
Tongo leaned forward and looked in her eyes, and Mary was again stunned by the amount of age and wisdom she found there, "Mary, Jedi Knight, do not feel you have offended us with your quick visit. Know, rather, that you have given us hope. The sooner you and your friend bring the Imperials down, the sooner more people can join us here. I do hope, however, that you will come yourself with the time comes."
"Oh, of course!" Mary said quickly, throwing her arms around the great animal, "I'll miss you guys!" She then turned and followed Katie, who had waited with her friend with a wry smile growing on her face.
Once in the control room, the two girls found R2-D2 chattering away happily with the computer, the familiar computer jack already produced and turning rapidly in the computer port. The screen flashed through older communications, and then landed on the one Mary had discovered, now known to have been sent by Luke. R2 quickly switched the screen to another one that said 'Tracking Communication.' Katie watched as a small bar appeared at the bottom of the screen, growing larger by the second. The results of R2's search were loading on the screen.
"This almost seems too easy," Katie said, "As soon as we figure out where he was sending this message, we can know where to look next."
"Don't jinx it," said Mary.
"Oh, come on! You know that's all a bunch of luck and nonsense!"
"I wouldn't be so sure," Mary said, pointing to the screen.
Katie looked and noticed the loading bar had frozen, and that the screen was becoming fuller of static and glitches by the second. "Oh crap!" she cried, lunging for R2 and yanking him free before the whole computer went haywire and sent shocks of electricity in all direction before finally giving up with a small puff of smoke.
"What a piece of junk!" Mary yelled, running over and kicking the side of the machine, producing a large dent.
"I don't think so," Katie said, setting R2 upright, "I think someone didn't want us knowing who Luke was talking to."
"Well, that was obviously whoever he was communicating with," Mary said, balancing on one foot while letting the pain in the dent-producing one settle down.
Katie looked at the smoking piece of technology and sighed, noticing that she had been doing that a lot lately, "That still doesn't explain who was in the holding cell. Luke was alone, and he would be living in his ship, not that he would want to spend the night in a cell anyway."
"What about the other people the tauntauns mentioned? They said there were two of them, and that one of them gave off negative vibes," said Mary.
"Of course!" Katie said, "Then whoever the evil guy was must've had a prisoner! That's who was kept in the cell, and that's who Luke is trying to find!"
"That makes sense," said Mary, "But I'm getting that feeling that this is way too easy… again."
Katie shrugged, as she began to lead Mary and R2-D2 out of the abandoned base to where their ship was waiting for them, "Maybe, but why complain about it? You don't wanna jinx this mission anymore that I do."
Mary reached the exit door first and slid it open with a nudge from the Force, "Yeah, I know, but…" Mary trailed into nothingness, looking behind Katie with a shocked look on her face, "MOVE!" Mary dove at her friend, driving her out of the way as she felt a searing pain spread across her back and shoulders, "Ouch…"
"Mary! What..?" Then Katie saw it. Standing over her friend with fresh blood dripping from it's one clawed arm, was a huge, white monster, its fanged mouth stretching into a massive roar. The wompa stepped forward, wanting to end its kill and have a fresh dinner.
Mary picked herself up, her face set in a firm grimace from the pain and the feeling of warm blood dripping down her back. Katie stood also, instantly reaching for her lightsaber and confronted the creature. Enraged by the humming beam of light, the creature dove forward once more. Katie smoothly sidestepped around it, but Mary's mind wasn't comprehending thought that fast just yet. Instead of reaching for her own saber or dodging out of the way, she panicked and sent a great surge of Force at the wompa, pushing it back against the far wall.
The wompa then gave up on Mary, turning to Katie, it reached out its massive claw to make at least one kill, but Katie was working a little better than Mary had. Acting on instinct, she dodged and shot her arm at the monster in an upward thrust. With a satisfactory hiss, the turquoise blade seared off the wompa's other arm. Katie was about to finish it off, when a flash of red light shot past her face and into the wompa's chest. The creature gave one last defiant cry before falling to the ground in a lifeless heap. Mary stepped over to the corpse, blowing on the barrel of her blaster.
"Bitch," Mary said smoothly as she kicked it once in the side for good measure.
Katie rolled her eyes at her friend's theatrics as she bent to study the monster, "Hey, you know what? This is the same wompa that attacked Luke in episode five! Isn't that cool?"
"Yeah, I guess," Mary said as she slowly began walking to the ship waiting for them right outside the door, "Can we just go?"
Katie hissed in sympathy as she saw the long, jagged claw marks on her friend's back, still oozing blood slowly, "Maybe we should do something about that first."
Mary narrowed her eyes in pain as fresh snow from outside fell into her wound, slowly giving her a case of frostbite to match, "Yeah, that might be a good idea."
Katie nodded and looked at Mary's injury. The cut wasn't too deep; Mary's many warm layers had kept the wompa's claws from doing any serious injury, but it still needed to be closed before infection set it. "Alright, but I'm not so sure how to do this…" Katie closed her eyes and gently set her hands on the wound, gaining a small hiss of pain from Mary. Sending her friend a silent apology, Katie began sending slow waves of the Force at the wound, trying to somehow seal it shut. She felt like she was relaxing a little, and then was stuck in a trance, whispering words she didn't recognize herself. After a few moments, she snapped out of it and saw perfectly healed skin where the gash was. Mary wouldn't even gain a scar from this venture, something she would have the nerve to complain about later in their journey.
Mary rotated her shoulders and smiled, "Awesome! That feels as good as new, and do I even need to mention that I think we found your Jedi talent?"
Katie smiled softly, "Yeah, I was kinda looking for it, and I realized that what I was doing wasn't entirely… from me."
R2.D2 beeped something incomprehensible. Katie nodded, "Yeah, we really should get back to the ship. Who knows how many wompas this fella fathered over the years?"
Mary really didn't want to think about it, and quickly changed the subject, "I still think being able to talk to a rolling garbage can is some measure of a Jedi talent."
Katie laughed, the first time she had all day. She quickly walked up the ramp into their ship, Mary close behind, "In any case, I am SO picking where we go next, since we weren't able to figure out where Luke went from the control room."
"So, where were you thinking?" asked Mary as she sat in the pilot's chair.
Katie sent her friend a grin as she took the copilot's seat and began activating the engines, "Well, if there's a bright center to the universe, I was thinking the planet that is farthest from."
The ship took off slowly and began picking up speed as it headed to the atmosphere, "Ugh," Mary said, "Tatooine is way too hot. Why would you wanna go there anyway?"
"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy," Katie replied, truly having a good time with this.
Mary rolled her eyes, "Will you stop with the Star Wars quotes?"
"Fine," Katie said, helping guide the ship into the proper range for hyperspace travel, "We decided a while ago to check all of Luke's old haunts. What better place to check than where he grew up? Besides, he's probably already been there, maybe someone picked up some info on him before he left. You know how smugglers and bounty hunters love to talk."
Mary perked up a little at the prospect of meeting some smugglers and bounty hunters, and Katie felt she could address a mild concern that she had realized back at the cave, "Mary… I noticed how you were… uh… unwilling to use your lightsaber back with the wompa and everything…" Katie regretted mentioning it instantly, when Mary's appearance went from normal to slightly anxious and mildly angry.
"I don't think–" Mary began with a tone of anger, but was cut off by a loud clanking in the back of the ship, "What the…?" She quickly set the ship on autopilot as she ran to the storage closet, which they had kept nearly empty. Katie was right behind her as she activated the door.
They both jumped back as a six-foot tall animal tumbled from the closet and began breathing heavily. "I thought I would never get out of there!" it whined.
Mary started laughing hysterically, "Toboggan! What are you doing here?" Katie just stared, knowing she couldn't understand her friend or the tauntaun she was talking to.
"Well," Toboggan began sheepishly, "I didn't want you to leave, but you said you had to, so I thought I could go with you, and Tongo said I could and… I missed you! Please don't take me back!" With that, he placed his large head on Mary's chest, demanding to be petted behind the ears.
Mary obliged, still taking in this new development, "Well, I guess if Tongo said you could, then it's alright with me if you stay."
"Yay!" he said in a childish way. He returned to the closet and sat on the floor, where he had pulled several blankets from the top shelf, "I can stay in here and out of your way, as long as this door stays open."
Mary nodded and set the door to remain open, looking to Katie, she shrugged and grinned, "I guess we have a stowaway, and who am I to deny a tauntaun a little fun?"
Katie groaned, "As long as you feed him and clean up after him…"
Mary squealed with joy as she ran back to the cockpit and began setting the coordinates for hyperspace travel, "Ya know," she began, "Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dustin' crops, boy!"
Katie sat in the copilot chair slowly, "This is gonna be a long flight." With that, the ship disappeared into hyperspace, carrying two girls, a hyper tauntaun, and one perky droid with it.