Trilogy (34 page)

T
he Tauntaun was racing at maximum speed, certainly too fast considering the distance it had traveled and the unbearable frigid air. No longer wheezing, it had begun moaning pitifully, and its legs were becoming more and more unsteady. Han felt sorry about the Tauntaun's pain, but at present the creature's life was only secondary to that of his friend Luke.

It was becoming difficult for Han to see through the thickening snowfall. Desperate, he searched for some interruption in the eternal plains, some distant spot that might actually be Luke. But there was nothing to see other than the darkening expanses of snow and ice.

Yet there was a sound.

Han drew the reins in, bringing the Tauntaun to an abrupt halt on the plain. Solo could not be certain, but there seemed to be some sound other than the howling of the winds that whipped past him. He strained to look in the direction of the sound.

Then he spurred his Tauntaun, forcing it to gallop across the snow-swept field.

L
uke could have been a corpse, food for the scavengers, by the time the light of dawn returned. But somehow he was still alive, though barely, and struggling to stay that way even with the night storms violently assaulting him. Luke painfully pulled himself upright from the snow, only to be blasted back down by the freezing gale. As he fell he
considered the irony of it all—a farm boy from Tatooine maturing to battle the Death Star, now perishing alone in a frozen alien wasteland.

It took all of Luke's remaining strength to drag himself a half meter before finally collapsing, sinking into the ever-deepening drifts. “I can't …” he said, though no one could hear his words.

But someone, though still unseen, had heard.

“You must.” The words vibrated in Luke's mind. “Luke, look at me!”

Luke could not ignore that command; the power of those softly spoken words was too great.

With a great effort, Luke lifted his head and saw what he thought was a hallucination. In front of him, apparently unaffected by the cold and still clad only in the shabby robes he had worn in the hot desert of Tatooine, stood Ben Kenobi.

Luke wanted to call out to him, but he was speechless.

The apparition spoke with the same gentle authority Ben had always used with the young man. “You must survive, Luke.”

The young commander found the strength to move his lips again. “I'm cold … so cold …”

“You must go to the Dagobah system,” the spectral figure of Ben Kenobi instructed. “You will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master, the one who taught me.”

Luke listened, then reached to touch the ghostly figure. “Ben … Ben …” he groaned.

The figure remained unmoved by Luke's efforts to reach it. “Luke,” it spoke again, “you're our only hope.”

Our only hope
.

Luke was confused. Yet before he could gather the strength to ask for an explanation, the figure began to
fade. And when every trace of the apparition had passed from his sight, Luke thought he saw the approach of a Tauntaun with a human rider on its back. The snow-lizard was approaching, its gait unsteady. The rider was still too far away, too obscured by the storm for identification.

In desperation the young Rebel commander called out, “Ben?!” before again dropping off into unconsciousness.

T
he snow-lizard was barely able to stand on its saurian hind legs when Han Solo reined it to a stop and dismounted.

Han looked with horror at the snow-covered, almost frozen form lying as if dead at his feet.

“Come on, buddy,” he appealed to Luke's inert figure, immediately forgetting his own nearly frozen body, “you aren't dead yet. Give me a signal here.”

Han could detect no sign of life, and noticed that Luke's face, nearly covered with snow, was savagely torn. He rubbed at the youth's face, being careful not to touch the drying wounds. “Don't do this, Luke. It's not your time.”

Finally a slight response. A low moan, barely audible over the winds, was strong enough to send a warm glow through Han's own shivering body. He grinned with relief. “I knew you wouldn't leave me out here all alone! We've got to get you out of here.”

Knowing that Luke's salvation—and his own—lay in the speed of the Tauntaun, Han moved toward the beast, carrying the young warrior limply in his arms. But before he could drape the unconscious form over the animal's back, the snow-lizard gave an agonized roar, then fell into a shaggy gray heap on the snow. Laying his companion
down, Han rushed to the side of the fallen creature. The Tauntaun made one final sound, not a roar or bellow but only a sickly rasp. Then the beast was silent.

Solo gripped the Tauntaun's hide, his numbed fingers searching for even the slightest indication of life. “Deader than a Triton moon,” he said, knowing that Luke did not hear a word. “We haven't got much time.”

Resting Luke's motionless form against the belly of the dead snow-lizard, Han proceeded to work. It might be something of a sacrilege, he mused, using a Jedi Knight's favorite weapon like this, but right now Luke's lightsaber was the most efficient and precise tool to cut through the thick skin of a Tauntaun.

At first the weapon felt strange in his hand, but momentarily he was cutting the animal's carcass from hairy head to scaly hind paws. Han winced at the foul odor that rose from the steaming incision. There were few things he could remember that stank like a snow-lizard's innards. Without deliberation he tossed the slippery entrails into the snow.

When the animal's corpse had been entirely eviscerated, Han shoved his friend inside the warm, hair-covered skin. “I know this doesn't smell so good, Luke, but it'll keep you from freezing. I'm sure this Tauntaun wouldn't hesitate if it were the other way around.”

From the body of the snow-lizard, another blast of entrail-stench rose out of the disemboweled cavity. “Whew!” Han almost gagged. “It's just as well you're out cold, pal.”

There wasn't much time left to do what had to be done. Han's freezing hands went to the supply pack strapped to the Tauntaun's back and rummaged through the Rebel-issue items until he located the shelter container.

Before unpacking it, he spoke into his comlink. “Echo Base, do you copy?”

No response.

“This comlink is useless!”

The sky had darkened ominously and the winds blew violently, making even breathing close to impossible. Han fought to open the shelter container and stiffly began to construct the one piece of Rebel equipment that might protect them both—if only for a short while longer.

“If I don't get this shelter up fast,” he grumbled to himself, “Jabba won't need those bounty hunters.”

III

A
RTOO
-D
ETOO STOOD JUST OUTSIDE
the entrance to the secret Rebel ice hangar, dusted with a layer of snow that had settled over his plug-shaped body. His inner timing mechanisms knew he had waited here a long time and his optical sensors told him that the sky was dark.

But the R2 unit was concerned only with his built-in probe-sensors that were still sending signals across the ice fields. His long and earnest sensorsearch for the missing Luke Skywalker and Han Solo had not turned up a thing.

The stout droid began beeping nervously when Threepio approached him, plodding stiffly through the snow.

“Artoo,” the gold-colored robot inclined the upper half of his form at the hip joints, “there's nothing more you can do. You must come inside.” Threepio straightened to his full height again, simulating a human shiver as the night winds howled past his gleaming hull. “Artoo, my joints are freezing up. Will you hurry … please? …” But
before he could finish his own sentence, Threepio was hurrying back toward the hangar entrance.

Hoth's sky was then entirely black with night, and Princess Leia Organa stood inside the Rebel base entrance, maintaining a worried vigil. She shivered in the night wind as she tried to see into the Hoth darkness. Waiting near a deeply concerned Major Derlin, her mind was somewhere out on the ice fields.

The giant Wookiee sat nearby, his maned head lifting quickly from his hairy hands as the two droids Threepio and Artoo reentered the hangar.

Threepio was humanly distraught. “Artoo has not been able to pick up any signals,” he reported, fretting, “although he feels his range is probably too limited to cause us to give up hope.” Still, very little confidence could be detected in Threepio's artificial voice.

Leia gave the taller droid a nod of acknowledgment, but did not speak. Her thoughts were occupied with the pair of missing heroes. Most disturbing to her was that she found her mind focused on one of the two: a dark-haired Corellian whose words were not always to be taken literally.

As the princess kept watch, Major Derlin turned to acknowledge a Rebel lieutenant reporting in. “All patrols are now in except Solo and Skywalker, sir.”

The major looked over at Princess Leia. “Your Highness,” he said, his voice weighty with regret, “nothing more can be done tonight. The temperature is dropping fast. The shield doors must be closed. I'm sorry.” Derlin waited a moment then addressed the lieutenant. “Close the doors.”

The Rebel officer turned to carry out Derlin's order and immediately the chamber of ice seemed to drop even
more in temperature as the mournful Wookiee howled his grief.

“The speeders should be ready in the morning,” the major said to Leia. “They'll make the search easier.”

Not really expecting an affirmative reply, Leia asked, “Is there any chance of their surviving until morning?”

“Slim,” Major Derlin answered with grim honesty. “But yes, there's a chance.”

In response to the major's words, Artoo began to operate the miniature computers inside his barrellike metal body, taking only moments to juggle numerous sets of mathematical computations, and climaxing his figurings with a series of triumphant beeps.

“Ma'am,” Threepio interpreted, “Artoo says the chances against survival are seven hundred twenty-five to one.” Then, tilting toward the shorter robot, the protocol droid grumbled, “Actually, I don't think we needed to know that.”

No one responded to Threepio's translation. For several prolonged moments there was a solemn silence, broken only by the echoing clang of metal slamming against metal: the huge doors of the Rebel base were closed for the night. It was as if some heartless deity had officially severed the assembled group from the two men out on the ice plains and had, with a metallic bang, announced their deaths.

Chewbacca let out another suffering howl.

And a silent prayer, often spoken on an erstwhile world called Alderaan, crept into Leia's thoughts.

T
he sun that was creeping over Hoth's northern horizon was relatively dim, but its light was enough to shed some
warmth on the planet's icy surface. The light crawled across the rolling hills of snow, fought to reach the darker recesses of the icy gorges, then finally came to rest on what must have been the only perfect white mound on the entire world.

So perfect was the snow-covered mound that it must have owed its existence to some power other than Nature. Then, as the sky grew steadily brighter, this mound began to hum. Anyone observing the mound now would have been startled as the snow dome seemed to erupt, sending its snowy outer covering skyward in a great burst of white particles. A droning machine began pulling back its retractable sensor arms, and its awesome bulk slowly rose from its frozen white bed.

The probe robot paused briefly in the windy air, then continued on its morning mission across the snow-covered plains.

S
omething else had invaded the morning air of the ice world—a relatively small, snub-nosed craft, with dark cockpit windows and laser guns mounted on each side. The Rebel snowspeeder was heavily armored and designed for warfare near the planet's surface. But this morning the small craft was on a reconnaissance mission, racing above the expansive white landscape and arcing over the contours of the snowdrifts.

Although the snowspeeder was designed for a two-man crew, Zev was the ship's only occupant. His eyes took in a panoramic scan of the desolate stretches below, and he prayed that he would find the objects of his search before he went snowblind.

Presently he heard a low beeping signal.

“Echo Base,” he shouted jubilantly into his cockpit comlink, “I've got something! Not much, but it could be a sign of life. Sector four-six-one-four by eight-eight-two. I'm closing in.”

Frantically working the controls of his ship, Zev reduced its speed slightly and banked the craft over a snowdrift. He welcomed the sudden G-force pressing him against his seat and headed the snowspeeder in the direction of the faint signal.

As the white infinity of Hoth's terrain streaked under him, the Rebel pilot switched his comlink to a new frequency. “Echo Three, this is Rogue Two. Do you copy? Commander Skywalker, this is Rogue Two.”