Chapter Two: Into the Tundra
Han was confused at the Doctor's declaration, to say the least.
"What do you mean, nobody knows?" he asked. Before the Doctor, Jennara, or Obi-Wan could respond, Han had called a deck officer over to him to ask about Luke's current location.
"Have you seen Commander Skywalker?" asked Han.
"I haven't, sir," answered the deck officer, not doing anything to assuage the fears of Han or the Jedi. "It's possible he may have come in through the south entrance."
"It's possible?" Han repeated angrily. "Go check."
"Yes, sir," said the deck officer, knowing better than to draw out the ire of Han Solo when his friend was in danger.
"What could have happened to him?" asked Han. "He was fine when I contacted him."
"I don't know, Han," said the Doctor consolingly. "I honestly don't know. But right now, it's imperative that we find him."
"Does the fate of the galaxy depend on it or something?" asked Han.
"You'd be surprised, actually," answered the Doctor.
"Well, he's my friend. Fate of the galaxy or not, I'm going to find him," said Han, storming off to the tauntaun bay. The Doctor thought that this was smart on Han's part. The snowspeeders that the Rebels had under their command had not yet been adapted to Hoth nights, which were much, much colder than the days.
"I'm going with you," called the Doctor, following after Han, who nodded his approval of the Doctor's decision.
"You aren't seriously thinking about going out there, are you?" asked Obi-Wan.
"I'll be fine," said the Doctor. "I don't need any of the cold gear, and even if I did, I could just use the Force to warm myself, Han, and Luke. It'll be great!"
"Assuming you find Luke," said Jennara a bit pessimistically.
"We will find him," admonished the Doctor. "He'll be just fine."
"Doctor," called Jennara. "Be careful."
"Always am," the Doctor called back as he followed Han into the tauntaun bay.
The Gallifreyan arrived in the tauntaun bay as an officer was reporting to Han that Luke had not made it to the south entrance. In fact, he was nowhere to be found in the base at all. The Doctor was worried for him.
"Are the speeders ready?" asked Han.
"No, sir," said an officer. "We're having trouble adapting them to the nights on this planet."
"That leaves us with the tauntauns, Han," said the Doctor.
"Yes, Doctor, it does," said Han resolutely as he climbed onto one of the tauntauns.
"But, sirs, the temperature is dropping too rapidly for your tauntauns to handle!" cried the officer.
"That's true, but our friend is out there in that freezing cold," said the Doctor as he climbed onto his own tauntaun. "We're going to help him, no matter what."
"Sirs, your tauntauns will freeze to death before you even reach the first checkpoint," urged the officer, but the Doctor could tell from his voice that the officer knew there was no convincing either man to back down from this impromptu mission.
"Then we're going to have fun in hell together," said Han as he and the Doctor spurred their tauntauns into action to rescue their friend, Luke Skywalker.
The Doctor felt his tauntaun shivering underneath him as he and Han travelled further into the tundra of Hoth's atmosphere. The Doctor himself was perfectly fine, and although Han was affected by the cold, he wasn't nearly as affected as either tauntaun. The officer would soon be proven correct, the Doctor feared, in his hypothesis that the tauntauns would not last much longer than nightfall, if they were lucky.
"How do we find him?" called Han through the blizzard of snow that ravaged both the riders and their tauntauns. "I can't see a thing out here."
"Let me see if I can lock onto his Force signature!" the Doctor called back as he set to the task he had just given himself. It was relatively painless. There wasn't a whole lot of life on the planet to begin with, and there were only five beings on the planet the Doctor absolutely knew were Force Sensitive. Ignoring the calls of Jennara and Obi-Wan's signatures as well as the whisper of Leia's, he quickly found a strong, yet relatively untapped Force presence to the west.
It was Luke, and he was moving.
"That way!" shouted the Doctor. "He's moving, but he won't get far on his own!"
The Doctor and Han spurred their tauntauns into action, and they ran as fast as they could to Luke's location. The Doctor could already sense that the cold was starting to overtake young Luke, and he spurred his tauntaun to move faster if she could. He could not allow Luke to die here, not when so much was at stake. On top of that, the Doctor had grown to really like Luke, and he genuinely cared about him like a son of his own. If Luke died out on the frozen tundra of Hoth, the Doctor would never forgive himself.
"He's fading, Han!" called the Doctor. "We have to hurry!"
"On it, Doctor!" Han called back, and he shouted, "Hyah!" to spur his tauntaun to run even faster. The Doctor did the same, and he felt Luke's Force signature weaken as the boy hit the ground, unable to move any longer.
It was only seconds later that the Doctor and Han found Luke barely conscious in the Hoth snow. He was muttering something that the Doctor had a bit of trouble hearing due to the howling winds of Hoth.
"Luke!" cried Han as he practically jumped off his tauntaun to assist Luke. "Come on, buddy! Give me a sign here!"
The Doctor got off his tauntaun and knelt beside Luke, his mind rapidly thinking of the best way to help him.
"Dagobah," muttered Luke. "Dagobah system."
That caught the Doctor off-guard. How could Luke know about Dagobah? The Doctor hadn't told him, unless...Perhaps there were other participants in this little excursion to Dagobah.
The Doctor's thought was shaken out of his head by a pained braying. Han's tauntaun was succumbing to the cold, and the Doctor's was not far behind. The Gallifreyan watched in sadness as both tauntauns collapsed into the snow and went limp. They were dead, and their riders were now stranded in the frozen wasteland.
"I have an idea," said Han, taking Luke's lightsaber from his belt and running over to one of the fallen tauntauns. Activating the lightsaber, Han made an incision in the tauntaun's stomach. Quickly deactivating the blade, Han returned to Luke and began pulling him toward the tauntaun's innards, shoving him inside the dead beast's body.
"I see," said the Doctor. "Using the tauntaun as a heating conduit. Ingenious."
"Thanks, Doctor," said Han.
"Luke," called the Doctor, crinkling his nose at the sudden scent of tauntaun guts, "this is probably going to smell really quite awful, but you'll be nice and warm throughout the whole night."
"And we'll be warm, too, once we get the shelter up," said Han. "Oh, boy. I thought they smelled bad on the outside. It's the inside that really stinks!"
"Agreed," said the Doctor. "Alright, let's get that shelter up."
For the next twenty minutes, the Doctor and Han worked tirelessly to set up the shelter. When they did finally finish it, Han yelled out a delighted, "Yes!" before huddling beside the heat lamp in the center of the shelter and warming his hands and face on it.
"Aren't you going to join me, Doctor?" asked Han over the howling wind.
"No, I'm alright, thanks," said the Doctor. "I can withstand these extreme temperatures."
"Suit yourself," said Han as he continued to warm himself.
Throughout the entire night, the Doctor sat outside the shelter and meditated. When he calmed himself and began to meditate, he found that it was the one time this new body could rest or do anything without flapping his hands about like a madman. But the Doctor supposed that this incarnation was a bit of a madman. He liked that. He liked all the energy he had in his eleventh form. It was as though he and his tenth body were conduits for all of the energy built up over eight hundred and sixty-odd years before his tenth body came to be, and they were releasing all of that energy. Even at nine hundred and thirty-five-was he really that old already?-he felt as though he were a spry youth of only about twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven. He looked that age, too, and he was surprised whenever he looked in a mirror and found himself staring into the face of a young man with the oldest eyes he had ever beheld.
The Doctor's mind then flitted to Luke and what he had muttered before being stuffed into the gutsack of a dead tauntaun. He had muttered, "Dagobah system," and that got the Doctor curious. How had he learned that system? The Doctor had never heard Obi-Wan mention it, so that route was out. Jennara had never even heard of the system; the Doctor hadn't seen fit to go back there. Who else could have told Luke? An instant later, he had it.
Qui-Gon.
The spirit of the late Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn was the only other person the Doctor knew of who had even heard mention of Dagobah. It had to have been him. It might also have been Obi-Wan talking to Luke about random planets in the Outer Rim when the Doctor wasn't paying attention because he was too enthralled by Jennara's smile and-
The Doctor stopped himself again. He shouldn't be having these thoughts. He should be trying to keep his distance from Jennara so he wouldn't be as heartbroken if she were to die as he was when Stass died.
Never again, he thought to himself.
For the rest of the night, the Doctor meditating on various subjects including the Rebel Alliance, Jennara, the history of the galaxy as a whole, Jennara, the history of the Jedi Order up until the outbreak of the Clone Wars, Jennara-
The Doctor really needed to get Jennara out of his mind. He couldn't bear the pain if he lost her. He imagined that it would be greater than any pain he had ever endured, with the exception of the destruction of Gallifrey.
The Doctor felt the morning sun on his face, and he opened his eyes. He stood and looked around the bright white landscape, soaking it in before turning his attention to Han, who had fallen asleep beside the heat lamp, and Luke, still unconscious inside the dead tauntaun, which was now covered in snow. Luke needed medical attention as soon as possible. Hopefully, the Rebels sent out a search party for them already. If they didn't, well...Luke was going to be in some trouble.
The Doctor woke Han up quickly, then set about turning on the signal receiver to see if anything had come in. So far, nothing had, but the Doctor wasn't going to give up hope that easily.
Han reached into the snow mound that contained Luke inside the tauntaun and quickly pulled Luke out. the Doctor used the Force to gradually cool him down instead of leaving him to the elements of Hoth so as not to put the poor boy into shock.
While the Doctor was steadily cooling Luke down, he heard the communicator crackle to life. Han immediately jumped to it and brought it over to the Doctor, and both men listened to the communication coming through.
"This is Rogue Two," said the voice of Zev Senesca, also known as Hobbie, a Rogue Squadron pilot who was good friends with both Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles. "This is Rogue Two. Commander Skywalker, do you copy? Captain Solo, do you copy? General Doctor, do you copy? This is Rogue Two."
"Doctor?" asked the Doctor rhetorically. "Doctor?! Doctor who?"
The Doctor could hear the smile in Hobbie's voice as he patched Echo Base into their comms channel and said, "Echo Base, this is Rogue Two. I've found them. Repeat: I've found them."
The Doctor, Han, and Luke were picked up by Rebel forces about twenty minutes after Hobbie made the call. As soon as their transport landed, the Doctor and Han rushed Luke straight to the medical wing of Echo Base. Leia met them in the medical wing as a 2-1B droid placed him inside a bacta tank to heal the wounds he had sustained to his face, which the droid had diagnosed as a wampa attack. How Luke had made it out, the Doctor would have to find out.
The Doctor, Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and Alliance droids C-3PO and R2-D2 were watching Luke as he healed. The unsealing of a door told the Doctor that that number had increased by at least one person.
"Doctor!" shrieked Jennara Oswin. "Thank the Force you're safe!"
Jennara wrapped the Doctor in an affectionate hug that the Doctor willed to last for a lifetime. Unfortunately, their hug was not meant to last that long, and the Grand Master and his former Padawan separated, albeit slowly.
"And thank the Force you and Han got Luke back okay," she added as a bit of an afterthought.
"Yes, indeed," said Obi-Wan, who had joined them as well. "That was truly heroic of you both."
"Thank you, Obi-Wan," said the Doctor, bowing graciously to his Jedi colleague.
"Yeah, thanks," said Han absently. He was watching the bacta tank with Luke. Leia, Chewbacca, and the droids watched it as well in silence, and the Doctor, Jennara, and Obi-Wan joined them, the Doctor willing Luke to be okay.
"He should be just fine," said the 2-1B. "You have nothing to worry about. We will contact all of you when he has fully recovered."
"Thank you," said the Doctor, his mind assuaged as he and the others strolled out of the bacta tank room.
The Doctor's next hour was spent pacing around the room that he, Jennara, and Obi, hoping beyond hope that this hospital visit didn't turn out like his last one. He could still remember Padme Amidala's dying words. She had said that there was still good in Darth Vader, and his fight with the Sith Lord aboard the Death Star seemed to corroborate. But he was still unsure. Vader had killed so many in service to his Master, Darth Sidious. What good was left in him? The Doctor didn't know, but he wanted to find out.
Just then, the Doctor's personal communicator went off. He activated it, and he heard the mechanical voice of the 2-1B medical droid.
"Commander Skywalker is out of the bacta tank, and he is making a full recovery," said the droid.
The Doctor, Jennara, and Obi-Wan breathed a sigh of relief, though the 2-1B probably only heard the Doctor. Luke was okay, and that was most certainly good for all of them.
"Thank you, 2-1B," said the Doctor. "I'll be right over."
The Doctor, Jennara, and Obi-Wan bounded excitedly to another portion of the medical wing, the recovery room, which was adjacent to the room with the bacta tank. There, sitting in a white robe, was Luke Skywalker, looking relieved to be back in Echo Base.
"Hey, hey! There he is!" called the Doctor jovially as he and his Jedi companions entered the room.
"Hey, Doctor," said Luke, a bit tired, but smiling nonetheless.
"How are you feeling, Luke?" asked Obi-Wan.
"Much better, Ben," answered Luke. "Thank you."
"What happened?" asked Jennara curiously.
"Well, it happened while I was on patrol," explained Luke. "That assignment that Leia asked you guys to give me and Han. I saw some sort of meteor or something crash down to the surface, and I went to go check it out. My tauntaun stopped suddenly. I had thought that she smelled something. Turns out it was a wampa. I saw it come at me out of the corner of my eye, and the next thing I knew I was dangling upside-down by my feet on the ceiling of its cave."
"Han and I found you a good two-hundred meters from any known wampa caves," said the Doctor. "How did you escape?"
"I tried unfastening myself, but the ice around my feet was too thick," answered Luke. "I couldn't do it by myself. That was when I noticed my lightsaber stuck in the snow right near me. I tried to grab it, but I couldn't reach it. So I calmed myself, and I called on the Force. I reached out, and the lightsaber flew into my hands."
"You used Force Pull," said Obi-Wan, sounding amazed. "I never taught you that. Where did you learn it?"
"I just did it, Ben," said Luke. "I don't know where it came from. I just knew that the Force could help me out when I was in a tight pinch, so I figured I would try it. Anyway, I was able to use the saber to unlatch myself from the cave ceiling, and I just barely made it out before collapsing in the snow. Guess that was when you and Han found me, Doctor."
"It was, actually," said the Doctor. "We found you just a few seconds after you collapsed." The Doctor paused for a moment, considering his next question and whether or not he wanted to ask it.
"Something on your mind, Doctor?" asked Luke, as if he were reading his thoughts.
"Yes, actually," said the Doctor. "What do you know about Dagobah?"
Obi-Wan and Jennara looked at the Doctor in confusion. They were probably wondering where he was going with this.
"Nothing," answered Luke plainly. "Why do you ask?"
"Well, when Han and I found you, you were muttering something," explained the Doctor. "'Dagobah system.' That's what you said. Obi-Wan, Jennara, and I were talking about going there to teach you some more about the Force."
"Really?" asked Luke. "When?"
"I'm not sure," said the Doctor. "But I am sure of the fact that we never mentioned it to you. In fact, the idea popped into my head yesterday right after you left on your assignment. I just want to know where you heard it from."
"Now that you mention it, someone spoke to me right before I lost consciousness," said Luke. "He said dark times were approaching fast, and he told me to go to Dagobah when they came to pass."
"He?" asked the Doctor.
"I only heard his voice, but it was definitely a man," answered Luke. "I could tell by the voice."
"Did he say who he was?" asked Obi-Wan, his eyes lighting up at the possible mention of his old Master.
"Not a name," said Luke. "He just said that he was someone who's taught both Ben and the Doctor."
The Doctor and Obi-Wan smiled at each other, knowing that it was indeed Qui-Gon Jinn who had spoken to Luke out in the tundra of Hoth. Jennara understood as well, even though she had been born after Qui-Gon's death at the hands of the sinister Darth Maul on Naboo. All three Jedi lit up, and Luke looked at them a bit confusedly as Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and the droids entered the recovery room and joined the Jedi and their student.
"Master Luke, sir, it's so good to see you fully functional again!" cried C-3PO joyously.
R2 bleeped in Luke's direction, indicating his relief and gratitude to both Han and the Doctor.
"How you feeling, Luke?" asked Han. "You don't look too bad. In fact, you look strong enough to rip the ears off a gundark."
"All thanks to you and the Doctor," said Luke gratefully.
"That's two you owe me, junior, plus one more for the Doctor," said Han, to which Luke chuckled. "Well, Your Worship," he added to Leia, "Looks like you got me to stick around a bit longer."
"What do you mean?" asked Jennara.
"I didn't have anything to do with it," said Leia. "General Rieekan thinks that it's dangerous for any ships to leave the system until the energy field is activated."
"I agree with General Rieekan," said Obi-Wan.
"As do I," said the Doctor. "Who knows what lovely surprises the Empire has in store for us wandering about the galaxy?"
"Good point," conceded Han, "but I think the Princess here just can't bear to let a gorgeous guy like me out of her sight," he added a bit smugly.
The Doctor noticed Luke's annoyed look just behind Han. He wasn't too pleased with Han's flirting, the Doctor could tell.
"I don't know where you get your delusions, laser-brain," Leia fired back. Now, it was Chewbacca's turn to laugh at Han, but this time, it was at the smuggler's expense.
"Oh, yeah, laugh it up, fuzzball," said Han. "But see, you didn't see the Princess and me alone in the south passage. She expressed her true feelings for me."
"My what?!" cried Leia in disgust, although her heart was starting to beat a bit more rapidly. "Why you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder!" She shouted at Han in anger, trying to insult him as much as possible to try and deflect her feelings for him.
"Scruffy-looking?" asked Han, turning to Luke and the Jedi. "I must have hit pretty close to the mark if I got her all riled up like that."
Leia subconsciously nodded her head, but nobody noticed it except the Doctor, Jennara, and Obi-Wan, probably because she was still hiding her emotions with a mask of disgust and anger.
"You know, you don't know everything about women just yet," said Leia. The Princess of Alderaan then proceeded to grab Luke by the face and plant her lips onto his own.
Luke's surprise was almost as great as the Doctor and Jennara's, who casually stepped out of the room. They had taken about four steps out of the recovery room before they starting bursting out in laughter. The Doctor didn't quite know why it was funny, and he wasn't sure Jennara did, either. Something about unwitting twin siblings kissing each other somehow struck them as odd and surprising, and they had no choice but to laugh hysterically.
Unfortunately, their laughter was placed on hold when General Rieekan himself got on the intercom and gave an announcement.
"Headquarters personnel, report to command center," Rieekan's voice boomed throughout Echo Base. The Doctor and Jennara rushed over to the command center to find Obi-Wan, Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and the droids all standing around one officer and his monitor.
"Ah, Doctor, Colonel Oswin, you're here," said Rieekan. "It seems that we have a visitor to the system. We picked it up moving east outside Zone Twelve."
"It's made of some kind of metal," said the officer.
"Then it couldn't be any of the indigenous creatures," said Jennara.
"Might be one of our speeders on patrol," suggested Han.
"Not possible," said Rieekan. "Nobody's checked out on patrol right now. It's something else."
"Sir," called the officer. "There's something weak coming through. I'll try to amplify it."
The Doctor listened to the static and the signal coming through, which sounded something like geer-te-de-fen-det.
"Sir, I am fluent in over six million forms of communication," said C-3PO. "That is not a signal used by the Alliance. It could be an Imperial code."
"I've got five billion languages running through my head, and I agree," said the Doctor. "Whatever's out there is not Rebel and probably unfriendly. I'm going to check it out."
The Doctor was about to exit the room when he caught sight of Jennara Oswin waiting at the monitor.
Jennara, he whispered to her telepathically.
What? she whispered back.
Come on.
What are you talking about?
Come and find the unfriendly metal thingy with me.
Why would I want to do that?
Because you know you want to. Now come on.
Jennara gave the equivalent of a bemused mental sigh before thinking to the Doctor, Fine.
Jennara joined the Doctor, and together, they went out into the cold of Hoth.
The Doctor used the Force to keep Jennara warm while they searched for the metal thing, whatever it was. It took them about ten minutes to track the signal to an area just outside of Echo Zone Twelve. There, the Doctor found a large, black, sinister-looking, yet familiar probe droid with lots of instruments attached to its underside.
"Oi!" shouted Jennara, throwing a pile of snow at the droid, which succeeded in getting its attention.
"Jennara, you can't just throw snow at possibly unfriendly droids! It's rude!" cried the Doctor as the probe droid began firing at them. The Doctor and Jennara activated their lightsabers, the green and yellow blades deflecting any laser bolts the droid shot at them.
"Yeah, but I did get its attention, didn't I?" asked Jennara. "And we know it's not friendly because it's shooting at us, so it's probably Imperial."
"Oh, it's definitely Imperial!" said the Doctor as he deflected a laser bolt that just barely nicked the probe droid. Even with that shot, it still exploded in an orange ball of flame.
"Well, that was fun," said Jennara. "Want to do it again?"
"Not really," said the Doctor.
"Yeah, me neither," said Jennara as she keyed in Echo Base on her communicator. "Echo Base, this is Jennara Oswin. We found the source of the signal."
"What was it?" asked Leia, who was on the other side of the communication.
"Probe droid of some kind," answered Jennara. "I don't really recognize it. It must have had some sort of self-destruct sequence. It wasn't hit that hard."
"What about you, Doctor? Do you know what it is?" asked General Rieekan, who was piggybacking on Leia's communication.
"It's definitely a probe droid," answered the Doctor, remembering where he had seen a droid like this one before. "It's a Viper. Manufactured by Arakyd Industries on Mechis III. The Republic used them for exploration purposes. They aided in the discovery of new planets and the life on those planets, if there was any at all. I sent out a few of them myself back in the day. Anyway, when the Empire took over, Arakyd Industries repurposed them for the Empire's needs. Like rooting out Rebel bases, which is probably what this one was doing." The Doctor looked around, and he soon found the shield generator the Rebellion used to keep Echo Base safe from any bombardment by the Empire.
"I can see the shield generator from here," said Jennara worriedly. "It's a good bet the Empire knows we're here, then."
General Rieekan and Leia were silent for a moment.
"We'd better start the evacuation immediately," said General Rieekan.
"I agree wholeheartedly, General," said the Doctor, realizing that this might be the dark time that Qui-Gon Jinn had told Luke about.
Hey everyone! I'm going to keep this author's note pretty short. I just performed in a production of Annie, and I am absolutely exhausted! I'd like to get as much sleep as I can tonight, as I have a busy day tomorrow as well.
Anyway, here's chapter two of Episode V! Lots of references to Doctor Who and a bit of foreshadowing as well, if I remember correctly.
Okay, the noise the probe droid makes...That's what I've always thought it sounded like, ever since the first time I saw ESB when I was a kid. Geer-te-de-fen-det. Just thought I'd try to explain myself with that one.
Next Friday: The Battle of Hoth!
And that's about it for this quickie of an author's note. Until the next chapter, my friends!