Chapter 18: Sink or Swim
"Ugh… I am never going to get used to this."
Katara was having another hard time inside a space ship, currently passing through hyperspace toward a distant destination. This time she was riding in this small cylindrical shaped ship, barely twenty meters long and a quarter of that wide. Currently leaning over in the ship's bathroom, Katara had thrown up for the third time during this trip. She felt the urge to throw up again, but nothing came up this time. Convinced that she had nothing left in her stomach, Katara flushed the toilet and made her way back to the other end of his cramped little ship.
She got to the cockpit and had to lean on a wall for support, feeling even worse than the last time she had been in hyperspace. Fortunately the copilot's seat was empty, and Katara quickly sat down and tried to rest. In the pilot's seat next to her Luke was flying the ship, keeping a steady course through the hyperspace jump. Katara looked past him and through the windshield, seeing the blue void that seemed to go on forever. She couldn't wait for the trip to be over, wanting the sickness to be gone as soon as possible.
Luke looked to his right and saw Katara there, more than a little concerned about her health. "How are you holding up?"
"Lousy," Katara answered. "I swear it's even worse than I remember."
"At least it's only temporary," Luke said.
"Are we almost there?" Katara asked.
"Just another half hour," Luke answered. "I'll make sure to fly in normal space for a while, let you recover before we get to work."
"Can't wait," Katara mused.
Half an hour later the ship emerged from hyperspace, returning to the black void of normal space. Katara felt better upon arrival, sensing the presence of new moons to draw power from. Not only was her waterbending back, it felt even stronger than it did on Hoth. She could see the moons from here, three of them orbiting one planet at varying distances. Katara wondered what they would look like from the planet's surface, imagining a night that could be as bright as day. As the ship continued forward Katara got a better look at the planet, even if the view was a poor one.
The planet itself mostly obscured by cloud cover, much of it taking the form of storms that battered the surface below. Katara spotted three hurricanes on this hemisphere alone, far larger and far more powerful than any hurricane back home. Breaks in the clouds revealed expansive oceans below, putting the oceans of Earth to shame. It seemed like the entire planet was covered by water, for there was no sign of land anywhere Katara could see. The ship was heading for the planet's night side, passing by all three full moons along the way.
"Are you up for this?" Luke asked.
Katara took a deep breath, and she was feeling fantastic when she let it out. "Let's do this."
The ship flew into the planet's atmosphere, heading straight into a thick storm somewhere over the northern hemisphere. Intense winds and thick rain battered the ship during its descent, becoming more intense with decreasing altitude. After passing through the clouds they could see the ocean below, stretching to the horizon in every direction. Lightning strikes lit up the sky and the sea, but they were far enough away to not threaten the ship. Soon the water filled up the entire view, as the ship was descending at a very steep angle.
Katara stood up and started moving her arms to control the water, and the sea opened up like a giant mouth to swallow the ship whole. Once beneath the surface the water closed behind the ship, with only another set of waves to mark their passing. A large bubble of air surrounded the ship as it dived deeper into the ocean, not a single drop of water splashing on the hull. The ship leveled off its flight a few hundred meters beneath the surface, and it started moving toward the southeast. Small fish fell into the bubble and hit the ship, most falling off to drop back into the water.
It was a little disorienting to see water ahead and above, depriving Luke of the usual ways to determine altitude and orientation. "This is weirder than I imagined."
"We turned a spaceship into a submarine," Katara reasoned. "That's got to be weird for everybody."
"Weird for the ship too," Luke said. He noticed that the sensor readouts had gone all screwy, the altimeter in particular constantly switching between positive and negative numbers. "It can't tell if we're above or below sea level."
"That sounds like a problem," Katara said.
"I can handle it," Luke assured, trusting his natural skills as a pilot. "Just need to be careful."
The ship continued on its merry way under the sea, ignoring the ocean currents flowing around the air bubble. Although the sensors were unreliable here, Luke still kept the ship on a straight and steady course. He trusted his instincts and they guided him well, avoiding underwater mountains that nearly reached the surface. Luke kept the ship's speed down to a slow pace, not wanting to go beyond Katara's ability to maintain the bubble. They were making good time regardless, and it would not be much longer before reaching their target.
Along the way they could see the remnants of an ancient civilization, lost to the steady rise of water several millennia ago. One could see the gradual change in infrastructure to handle rising seas, the higher elevations having sturdier structures than the bottom ruins. Now various sea creatures had taken over the long lost cities, living in the same places people had once inhabited. Beyond the ruins were massive support structures for a modern civilization on the ocean surface, keeping most of the buildings above at the elevation of high tide.
"Well we made it this far," Luke said, bringing the ship to a stop. "The trick seems to be working."
"You're sure they won't notice a big air bubble underwater," Katara said.
"The Kamino detection grid works by sending a pulse through the water," Luke explained. "Our bubble won't reflect the pulse back, so they won't detect anything in it."
"What if you're wrong?" Katara asked.
"Then we'd show up as a blob of static," Luke answered. "They won't know what to make of it until it's far too late to stop us."
"Okay then," Katara said. "Let's get the next part done."
After a few more minutes Luke glanced at Katara again. "How are you holding up?"
"I could do this all day," Katara said. By now she had gotten a good rhythm going, constantly moving her arms to maintain the bubble. "Not that I want to."
"We'll try to be quick," Luke promised. He turned back to the controls and got to work. "Heading back up now, just keep the bubble together."
The ship started its ascent back up toward the surface, slowly getting closer to the civilization floating up there. Luke kept the ship close to one of the supports, remaining directly under a thick disc-shaped structure resting on a platform at the top. Along the way Luke shut off the ship's headlights, nearly putting everything in pitch black darkness. Dim lighting from the surface filtered through the water, enough for Luke to judge just how far the ship was from the surface. Soon the ship entered a large shadow from one of the platforms, and Luke brought the ship to a stop again.
"We should only be a few meters down," Luke said. He looked at Katara again. "You're absolutely certain about what your powers can do here. It still seems like a colossal violation of thermodynamics."
Katara quickly pointed out the obvious. "You've seen me do this before."
"In a frozen wasteland," Luke said. "We're in a warm ocean now."
"Just tell me when to do it," Katara said.
"Okay," Luke said. He brought the ship up a little bit higher, and the air bubble made contact with the floating platform. "Do it."
Katara changed her arm motions to bend the water differently, forcing the water around the bubble to freeze solid. A shell of ice formed and stuck to the bottom of the platform, over twenty feet thick and completely sealed. The ice kept the air contained around the ship, allowing Katara to finally rest her arms after continuously bending for so long. The ship rose up slightly higher and extended a docking clamp from the top, making contact with an airlock hatch sticking out from the bottom of the platform and docking the ship there, putting a ship where a submarine was meant to dock.
Once finished docking Luke shut off the ship's engines, letting the ship hang like a really weird stalactite. Afterward Luke got to the ship's dorsal hatch and opened it, seeing the platform's airlock on the other side. It was locked of course, for obvious reasons, though Luke still tried to open it anyway. When that failed Luke took out his lightsaber and activated it, and he stabbed the bright blue blade into the airlock hatch. The lightsaber cut through the metal with ease and hot slag dribbled into the ship, and Luke took care not to get burned as he cut a wide circle into the hatch.
When Luke finished a circular chunk of metal fell into the ship, and the way was open into the airlock. "Alright, in and out before we're noticed."
Katara put a ladder into place so they could climb through the hatch, with Luke going up first to clear the way. The airlock was built at a forty-five degree angle, and the far end was several feet higher up. That end of the airlock wasn't locked, and Luke had it open in short order. On the other side there was a large white hallway, so shiny and clean that it seemed unnatural. It was also empty at the moment, though still brightly lit despite the waste. Once both of them were in the hallway Luke closed the airlock, making it look like the inner hatch had not been opened in the first place.
"It should be this way," Luke said, pointing in one direction. "Come on."
Luke led the way through this place, using a schematic kept on a data pad and comparing to signs on the walls. Their point of entry had bypassed all the external defenses, so all they had to worry about was being spotted inside. Every so often they had to duck into a side passage, avoiding others in this place that happened to be walking by. At one point they heard a large group approaching and hid from them, and they had to wait for a group of aliens to pass. Katara sneaked a peak at the aliens passing by, curiosity getting the better of her.
The aliens she saw were roughly humanoid in shape, but with stretched out limbs and necks that made then ten feet tall. Yet their arms and legs were thinner than the norm, and Katara wondered how it was possible for them to stand. It was off putting to see entirely white skin, along with the bald heads and weirdly shaped faces. They seemed to take care to where they stepped, keeping the pace slow to avoid any unnecessary falls. The aliens didn't notice anything and they kept on walking, and once they were gone it was safe to continue.
"What were those things?" Katara whispered.
"Kaminoans," Luke whispered back. He took them down another side passage. "They rarely leave their homeworld, and they do all kinds of genetic work for the Empire here. Not so much cloning anymore, more specialty stuff these days."
"Yeah, that went over my head," Katara said.
"Doesn't matter," Luke said. He was about to say more, but they had found their destination. "In here."
Thick metal doors marked the entrance to a special room, and the doors slid into the walls when Luke used a control panel. He paused when he realized it hadn't been locked, but figured the kaminoans never expected intruders to get this far into their complex. Inside the room was a large server, along with a computer terminal to access the data stored here. Luke accessed the terminal and tried to get into the data, but was immediately stopped by the need for an encrypted password. He had expected that to happen, and so he reached into his pocket and took out a small square disk.
"What's that thing?" Katara asked.
"Transfer drive," Luke answered. He plugged it into a slot on the terminal, and it automatically started downloading the data on this server's hard drive. "We'll take the info now, decrypt it back at base, analyze it later."
"How long will it take?" Katara asked.
"Not sure," Luke admitted. "It depends on how much data there is on this thing…" A red light started blinking on the terminal. "…or when they discover we are in the system."
An alarm went off throughout the complex, accompanied by flashing red lights in the hallways. Katara was already bending some water, expecting that she would need it real soon. "I think we need to go."
"Not until this is done," Luke insisted. "Without the data this mission is pointless."
"Well we can't stay here," Katara said.
"True," Luke said. He drew a blaster and faced the open doorway. "So we cause a ruckus until the drive is done. Then we pull it and get out of here."
They hurried out of the room and Luke closed the door, just so it wouldn't be that obvious they had been here. From there they hurried to the end of the hall, where they found a stormtrooper security force responding to the alarm. Those stormtroopers opened fire on the intruders, and Luke fired back while ducking back behind the corner. Katara made some ice spikes and flung them around the corner, impaling a pair of stormtroopers right in the chest. None of the stormtroopers' shots were getting to them here, but that would change if the battle went on long enough.
Luke faked a painful scream and fell back, and then signaled for Katara to pause the attack. Stormtroopers rushed in for the kill, coming around the corner right when Luke turned on his lightsaber. Two stormtroopers ran right into the blade that suddenly appeared, and they fell to the floor in four halves. The next two were impaled by larger ice spikes from Katara, and promptly flung into the far wall and pinned to it. The following two stopped just before falling into the trap, and Luke shot them at near point blank range.
A few stormtroopers were left, and Luke shot them down with his blaster. "More of them will come."
Katara reclaimed the water from the ice spikes, ready to use it all over again. "Let's go get them."
They hurried down the hallway the stormtroopers had come from, putting some more distance between themselves and the server room. This hallway led to a passage to the next complex over, a tunnel with transparent walls providing a view of the outside. High tide left this tunnel half submerged in water, apparently for the aesthetic value of getting to look at sea life while one walked through. It would have been marvelous to look at if they had the time to enjoy it, if they were here under peaceful circumstances.
Instead they were looking at a small platoon of stormtroopers coming from up ahead, all of them aiming blasters at the targets out in the open. Katara was already reacting to their presence, sweeping both arms inward to summon water from outside the tunnel. The walls burst under the strain and water rushed through, flooding the tunnel and slamming into the stormtroopers from both sides. Then she froze enough water to plug the tunnel entirely, just to stop the water from coming back her way. Water continued to flow the other way, until emergency bulkheads closed to hold back the flood.
"Well, we're not going that way anymore," Katara said, seeing her reflection in the ice. She then turned toward Luke. "Would your thing be done yet?"
"Not even close," Luke answered. He turned back and walked the way they had come from. "Still, good work blocking this route. Now we just have to cut them off from the other direction."
So they hurried back down the tunnel and into the hallway, quickly reaching the part in front of the server room. They got there in time to intercept another small platoon of stormtroopers, and it was back to ducking behind corners when the fighting started. Blaster bolts were flying everywhere with stormtroopers shooting at any movement they saw, not caring about the scorch marks they were leaving on the walls. Luke couldn't even glance around the corner to know where to shoot, not without getting his head blasted off anyway.
Firing blindly around the corner, Luke managed to bring a few stormtroopers down. "This isn't good."
"Obviously," Katara said. She got an idea, but needed to test a part of it first. "Let's see what this does."
Katara hurled some water past the corner and shaped it into an inch thick vertical sheet, putting it right in the middle of the incoming blaster fire. She watched many blaster bolts hit the water and pass through, and the stormtroopers kept on shooting through it regardless. She noticed that the blaster bolts were slightly smaller on the other side, some of the energy lost in the water. She added more water to the sheet to make it half a foot thick, and the blaster bolts dispersed completely in the water before they could get through.
Luke got the idea and stood behind the water, where he could see the stormtroopers without getting shot. He stuck his blaster through the water most of the way, getting the end of the barrel to poke out the other side. Luke opened fire on the stormtroopers, having near perfect aim from behind the safety of the water wall. One by one stormtroopers were struck down, which was easy to do when Luke didn't have to worry about getting shot back. Soon the entire platoon was either dead or too wounded to move, and the shooting came to a stop.
Afterward Katara took back the water from her wall, keeping it around her arms in long fluid tendrils. "You know, that turned out better than I imagined."
"Maybe we should start with that next time?" Luke suggested.
"Yeah sure," Katara said. She looked back at the way they had come from. "So is your little gadget done yet? Or do we have to fight more waves of goons?"
Luke led the way back to the server room, got inside and checked the progress on the computer terminal. "Knew we should have brought R2…"
"How much longer?" Katara asked.
"Just a moment," Luke answered. He saw the progress bar reach completion, and then he yanked out the transfer drive and pocketed it. "Got it, now let's get out of here."
"No arguments here," Katara said.
A slight tremor shook through the floor, and Luke had a sinking feeling in his gut. "That can't be good."
They hurried back through the hallway again, heading for the place where they had entered the complex. The airlock wasn't far away and they reached it in a few minutes, and they immediately discovered a major problem. It was completely filled with water, the spaceship's docking clamp torn apart, and the spaceship itself had compacted and was now slowly sinking into the ocean. Only a few scraps of metal remained attached to the airlock, all that Luke could see through the glass in the airlock door.
"Crap," Luke said.
Katara got a look and saw what happened. "Huh… ice must have melted."
"Thought it would have lasted a lot longer," Luke said. He turned away from the airlock and checked the schematic on his data pad. "So much for leaving the way we came."
"How are we going to get out of here?" Katara asked.
"We'll have to steal a ship," Luke answered. He found a suitable spot on the schematic, and then put the data pad. "They have a hangar in that direction."
"Lead the way," Katara insisted.
They didn't get very far before encountering resistance. Another platoon of stormtroopers arrived to stop them, shooting as soon as they spotted something they could shoot. Katara created a thick water wall to block blaster fire, confident in its effectiveness after the last time. Luke in turn stuck his blaster through the water again, and he shot back as quickly as he could squeeze the trigger. But then some stormtroopers threw these little metal spheres into the water, and Luke recognized them as thermal detonators.
Luke pulled his blaster out of the water wall and leapt for cover. "Hit the deck!"
A second later the thermal detonators exploded, annihilating the water wall with a massive shockwave that filled the hallway. Luke had gotten behind a corner in time, and he was knocked to the floor by a weakened shockwave. Katara had not reacted in time and had not moved far enough, taking the full force of the shockwave from a few meters away. It threw her all the way back into a wall, and she fell to the floor bleeding from her face and several other places. Neither of them could recover quickly enough, and the stormtroopers were closing in.
Woozy from the impact, and desperate to do something, Katara reached forward and clenched her fists. She wasn't sure what that might do, and certainly wasn't expecting this. "What the…"
Sudden seizures struck some stormtroopers, their bodies fighting against an unseen stranglehold on their flesh. Katara's fists clenched tighter and the stormtroopers collapsed, as if a puppetmaster cut their strings. Behind the victims more stormtroopers aimed their blasters, only for them to suffer the same fate when Katara repeated the desperate reach and clench of her fists. She then swung her fists and the stormtroopers were flung down the hallway, crashing into more of them that were right behind them.
Luke saw most of it from behind the corner, and when the stormtroopers were dealt with he got up and walked over to Katara. "Okay, never mind what I said earlier, start with that next time."
"I'll keep that in mind, now that I know I can do that," Katara promised. She saw Luke offer a hand, and she let him help her get back on her feet. "And I wasn't sure if that would do anything. I was kind of desperate for a minute there."
"So was that part of your waterbending, or something else?" Luke asked.
"Waterbending, I think," Katara answered. "I saw someone else do it way back, though I didn't know it was bending at the time. Didn't realize she was a waterbender back then, she died before I could talk with her."
Luke heard some groaning and turned to see stormtroopers getting back up, only for Katara to repeat her bending to slam them into a wall. "Sure is effective, you should use it more often."
"Maybe," Katara grumbled. She wiped blood off her face with her hand, and then wiped her bloody hand on a wall to smear the blood off. "I don't know… it doesn't feel right to do this. Reaching inside someone to control them… it's not a good power to have. I'm not sure if I want it."
"We use the gifts we're given, even if we don't like them," Luke said. He turned his lightsaber back on and let Katara get a good look at it. "I don't enjoy slicing stormtroopers in half with this thing, but sometimes it's necessary. When they're trying to kill us, we have to do everything we can to survive."
Katara sighed, not wanting to argue about the principle of the matter. Not when they still needed to get out of here. "Can we talk about this later? Like when no one wants to shoot us?"
Luke put his lightsaber away and held up his blaster instead. "Let's go."
They got moving again and hurried through the complex, heading for a hangar Luke found on the schematic. More stormtroopers arrived to intercept them, only to be swept aside by Katara bending their flesh into submission. The few she missed were shot down by Luke, and they barely slowed down the progress toward the hangar. Eventually the stormtroopers stopped coming, and a new alarm replaced the old one ringing through the complex. The new alarm convinced Luke to pick up the pace, and to keep Katara right next to him.
Someone watching from afar decided to simply eliminate the intruders, implementing a failsafe measure meant for exactly that. Bulkheads ahead and behind them slammed shut, trapping the intruders in one short segment of corridor. This was followed by side walls opening to let in a flood, meant to drown anyone and anything that was inside. Katara simply diverted the water around herself and Luke, forming a large bubble of air around them. Not a drop splashed on them, and the entire purpose of the failsafe had failed.
With the bubble around them Katara and Luke reached the bulkhead ahead of them, pressing the air up against the metal surface and make it dry. Luke turned on his lightsaber and stabbed the bulkhead, though it took a little while to cut open a hole big enough for them to fit through. When he was finished Luke kicked in the large severed chunk of metal, allowing him and Katara to get to the other side. Afterward Katara put plenty of water in the hole and froze it, plugging the path behind to prevent another flood.
"How much farther?" Katara asked.
"Should be over there," Luke said, pointing to one last door in their way.
That door was locked of course, and Luke's lightsaber cut it open easily. The hangar on the other side was a large space filled with a variety of ships, from the crude and blocky to the small and sleek varieties. The ships were guarded by stormtroopers and private security guards, all of whom met the same fate at Katara's bending. Luke quickly skimmed over the ships in the hangar, trying to find the one that best fit his needs. It only needed to carry two people and have a decent hyperdrive, and be fast enough to evade pursuit before making the jump to lightspeed.
"That one," Luke said, pointing at his choice. It was a slim silver ship, with wide wings in the back and the front end tapered like a sharp dagger. "Warm up the engines, I'll get the hangar door."
"Alright," Katara said. She was about to enter the ship when she turned back to Luke. "You do realize I don't know how to do that?"
Luke groaned and shook his head. "Never mind, just watch my back instead."
The hangar door was closed and under lockdown, and Luke didn't even try to override the controls, certain that it would take far too long. Instead he got into a different ship, a much larger one with a thick hull, and rigged the controls to engage the engines after a thirty second delay. Luke got out of that ship as quickly as he could, just enough time for the delay to pass, and he got to watch that ship take off without a pilot. The ship lurched forward and crashed into the hangar door, tearing a large hole and passing through to the other side.
The result was a smoldering wreck outside the hangar, nearly far enough away to fall off a platform and into the sea below. Luke checked the size of the hole in the hangar door, made sure the wreckage wouldn't be a problem, and was happy with this bit of crude demolition. Once the way out was clear Luke went back to the sleek ship, getting inside before more stormtroopers could get here. He went straight to the cockpit where Katara was waiting, and he got straight to work preparing the ship for takeoff.
"Strap in," Luke recommended. He already had a safety harness strapping him to the pilot's seat, and he had his hand on the throttle. "We're going out hot."
Katara strapped into the copilot's seat. "Ready when you are."
Luke engaged the throttle to maximum, and the ship accelerated so fast it pushed Luke and Katara into their seats. The ship shot through the hole and into the air, just above the ocean surface at high tide. Intense rain pummeled the ship as it took off, and Katara did what she could to clear the path ahead. Pursuit ships attempted to chase the stolen ship, but were hampered by the rain. Luke flew the ship straight into storm clouds above the sea, rising up at a near vertical angle. It lost the pursuit ships in the storm clouds, and on the other side the ship flew straight out into space.
As soon as he could Luke engaged the ship's hyperdrive, and only then could he relax. "Well that could have gone better."
Back to being sick to her stomach again, Katara slouched in her seat and glared at Luke. "Could have gone better? We lost our ship, nearly got blown up, and almost got stuck in that place."
"And we got out with valuable intel," Luke said. He held up the transfer drive, now containing all sorts of encrypted information. "This will greatly help the alliance, once it's decrypted of course. And we discovered another power at your disposal, which has proven quite useful. I'd say that's a win-win."