Chapter 25: Gara-Katte
It was snowing at Echo Base. Again.
Four planetary days had brought the base to operating maximum. Han and Paqs Patra had been persuaded to contact any smugglers or friends-of-a-friend that would take up arms against the Empire, and a few ships arrived every day and squeezed into the lower hanger beside snow speeders and X-wings. Every once in a while the snowy complex would be expanded, and some Rebel would come to Han reporting that there was new barracks or hallways or medical wards and one of the Jedi lying half-conscious between the new and old. With the recent excavation of an ion canon and its control room Raylsk had vowed to get the gun running and spent most of her time buried in the tech of the complicated control room.
On the fourth day Luke, Kit and a mechanic named Bade ventured out into the light snow on foot, their objective to recreate the generators to the east. A herd of docile tauntauns dug for ice-dependent plants beyond the ridge where the tall, shell shaped bank of generators had been.
Had been/were/are/would be
Luke could feel them in all times, simultaneously a paradox and what 'should be'.
Kit's Force power--the Nautolan had willingly taken the role of power source when he could not see the other-worldly object of their regeneration--threatened to sweep from Luke in a torrent. He let it flow steady. There must be a way to do this without taking a day's energy out with it. He channeled Kit's power to his own preservation, and could 'see' more clearly the metal coagulating as if from the air. Pipes burrowed through their own tunnels, and back in the base Raylsk jumped when sparks flew from a section of transforming wall. Lights came on all over the control room, and Raylsk bared her teeth and slapped a hand down on the console, her violet eyes unmistakably smiling.
Luke woke up in the snow, and from the stable temperature of his body it had been only a few seconds. He sat up.
Kit was conscious as well but supported by Bade, a stout Kel Dor brought to check the functioning of the generator and to, if needed, carry one or both of the Jedi home. But the generator was real and humming, and Kit groggily smiled when Luke stood up.
"Well." He sighed. "It worked."
"Congratulations, Commander Skywalker." Bade said.
"Get out your binocs, Bade." Luke spoke with quick urgency in his voice now.
Kit stood on his own, looking out toward the eastern horizon.
Bade handed Luke the electrobinoculars, and the Jedi put them to his eyes though he thought he knew what he would see.
Walkers on the horizon. The field of the binocs could encompass only a fraction of the vast machine, the great round foot or the swaying head, metallic against the white mountains and robin's-egg sky.
Luke handed the binocs back. "Go back to the base." He said.
"And leave you, sir?"
"Yes." Luke looked to the horizon again, and cold wind whipped his hair against his skin. So it was now, was it? Sooner than expected.
The Kel Dor hesitated, and Kit said, "The commander knows what he's doing." And they turned away.
Out on the white plains, the Imperial forces advanced . Commander Horn watched it all on blue screens surrounding his pilot's seat of a gara-katte, one of the new AT-AR, or "runners". The alien name granted these war machines by their slave manufacturers had stuck however, and they remained gara-katte. Beside the lumbering AT-ATs they were infinitely fast and maneuverable, modeled after some fleet feline. Blasters were mounted to either side of the 'head' and a military grade ion cannon extended over the cockpit from the wide back. There were five of these traveling with three AT-ATs, and a squadron of TIE bombers overhead, trailing scraps of atmosphere from their wing panels and double hulls.
The Rebel base appeared ahead as a blip on a screen. "Ready positions." Horn said. Ayes and affirmatives were received from the other pilots.
These gara-katte handled like a podracer. Horn eased both horizontal sticks foreword and the machine sprinted, drawing near to the flanks of the AT-AT at the head of the formation. He could see level with its main leg joints.
Tactical screens brought up the base's red-highlighted outlying generators, so far unprotected. Horn punched in the command for a primary target to be set, and on another screen the TIEs sped up.
But wait. Life reading in the shadow of the generators.
"Hold your fire."
Zoom-in showed a man standing by the generators, just waiting facing the wind. And in the Force--a call, just the tiniest bit mocking; come and find...
Horn held up a hand and gave the comm-command for full stop. His war machine paced forward.
It stopped level with the Rebel, and when the cockpit opened Horn showed himself to need no protection of weapon or heavy clothing, armored instead with the dark side he could feel pulsing at his fingertips. But the insolent Rebel spoke before he could, in a clear voice that carried through frigid air.
"You will take me to Lord Vader."
Funny... "Why should I?"
"Because I am his son."
This Rebel, this Sith whelp? Horn felt himself grimace. The young man before him rose on the Force, and he could see some power in his eyes and the set of his thin body.
Horn raised and clenched his gloved fist, and that power of movement was in his control. "You answer my requests, Sith."
"Our requests are the same."
Horn nodded and gestured. Jerkily the Sith's body lowered to the gunner's seat, behind Horn in the gara-katte head. He needed no gunner; the Force gave him enough control over himself and his machine to work all systems. Now the Sith sat, calm and cornered.
Horn looked back at him for a moment and scowled. He would not resist this man's orders--though what the Rebel said could not be true. And surely no one could use the Force against Vader's highest acolyte! Horn's mind was sound and his own.
The cockpit closed, and the gara-katte pivoted.
"Bandon, take command. I have an errand to run."
"Yes Commander."
The Sith sat still, eyes foreword. Horn turned to his controls and busied himself with launching the gara-katte into space.
Not all the new machines could do this, take to the black spaces when they were meant for the warmth of planets. But always Horn had to have the best, and so with precision deserving of the Maw scientists that had fashioned them wings of girder-metal swung from the gara-katte's sides and two drives raised from the animalistic bulge of back legs. Two leaping, jarring strides and it was in the air, and the white planet dwindling below.