by James Luceno
"He could be," Cudgel said after a moment. "After the last of the clone troopers left, the Wookiees searched local space for the pod, but no distress-beacon transmissions were picked up."
"Was the pod hyperspace-capable?"
Cudgel shook his head.
"But it could have been retrieved by a passing ship." The Wookiees conversed.
Cudgel listened attentively. "There's a chance it was."
Starstone looked at Tarfful. "What makes you think so?"
Cudgel ran his hand over his mouth. "Wookiee Senator Yarua reported that rumors circulating in the Senate claim Yoda led an attack on Emperor Palpatine in the Senate Rotunda itself."
"And?"
"Same rumor has it he was killed."
"Master Yoda doesn't lose," Siadem Forte said from his stool.
Cudgel returned a sympathetic nod. "Lots of us used to say that about the Jedi."
Starstone broke the silence that descended on the control room. "If Master Yoda is alive, then there's hope for all of us. He'll find us before we find him."
She felt renewed; hopeful once more.
"Tarfful asks what you plan to do now," Cudgel said.
"I suppose we'll continue our search," Starstone said. "Master Kenobi was on Utapau, and has yet to be heard from."
Tarfful issued what sounded like a sustained groan.
"He is honored to offer you safe haven on Kashyyyk, if you wish. The Wookiees can make it appear that you are valued customers."
"You would do that for us?" Starstone asked Tarfful.
His response was plaintive.
"The Wookiees owe the Jedi a great debt," Cudgel translated. "And debts are always honored."
A signal sounded from one of the consoles, and Cudgel and the Wookiees gathered around an inset screen. The human's expression was grave when he swung to the Jedi.
"An Imperial troop carrier is descending to the Kachirho platform."
Starstone's face lost color. "We shouldn't have come here," she said suddenly. "We've endangered all of you!"
39
By the time Cudgel returned to the landing platform the situation was already veering out of control. Blaster rifles raised and faced off with more than one hundred very indignant Wookiees, two squads of stormtroopers were deployed around the carrier that had delivered them to Kachirho, perhaps half a kilometer from where the Jedi transport was parked.
"Or are you going to tell us that your weapons are all the permission you need?" a human liaison staffer was saying to the troopers' commander as Cudgel hurried in.
The officer's armor was marked with green, and he wore a short campaign skirt. His sidearm was still holstered, but his enhanced voice was filled with menace. "Authorization was granted by Sector Three Command and Control. If you have any complaints, take them up with the regional governor."
"Commander," Cudgel said in a deferential tone, "how may I be of service?"
The officer gestured broadly to the gathered Wookiees. "Only if you can get these beasts to answer my questions." High-decibel snarls and furious roars rose from the crowd.
"You might want to find a more politic way to refer to Kashyyyk’s indigenes, Commander."
From behind the T-visored helmet, the trooper said: "I'm not here to be diplomatic. Let them howl all they want." He gazed at Cudgel. "Identify yourself."
"I'm known as Cudgel, far and wide."
"What are your duties here?"
"I assist with commerce. I can probably set you up with a nice selection of product, if you're interested."
"What would we want with wood?"
"What, you don't have campfires?"
The crowd woofed with laughter.
The commander put his gloved right hand on his blaster. "There'll be fires soon enough—Cudgel. Right where you can see them."
"I'm not sure I take your meaning, Commander."
The officer adjusted his stance, readying himself for action. "Kashyyyk is harboring enemies of the Empire."
Cudgel shook his head. "If there are enemies of the Empire here, the Wookiees are unaware of them."
"There are Jedi here."
"You mean you actually missed a few?"
The commander raised his left hand and poked Cudgel hard in the chest. "Either they are surrendered to us immediately, or we take this place apart, beginning with you." At the commander's wave, the stormtroopers began to spread out. "Search the landing area and the tree-city! All non-indigenes are to be seized and brought here!"
The Wookiees loosed a chorus of earsplitting yowls.
Cudgel backed out of range of the commander's armored fist. "They don't like it when people track dirt in."
Drawing his sidearm, the commander said: "I'm done with you."
But the words had scarcely left the officer's helmet enunciator when a Wookiee raced forward, knocking the blaster from his hand and hurling him into the troop carrier with such force that the commander's forearm and elbow armor remained in the Wookiee's grip.
At the same time, several Wookiee clarions roared in the distance.
The troopers turned, covering one another as the gathered crowd began to advance on them.
A ratcheting noise filled the western sky. Two gunships dropped from the treetops to reinforce the advance squads, stormtroopers descending from the open bay on rappel ribbons.
Rushing onto the landing platform, the new arrivals stopped short on hearing the familiar snap-hiss of igniting lightsabers.
Central to half a dozen blade-wielding Jedi stood a young raven-haired woman, with her weapon poised over her right shoulder.
"We hear you're looking for us," she said.
Standing on the bridge of the Exactor, Vader regarded distant Kashyyyk through the forward viewports. Commander Appo approached from one of the duty stations.
"Lord Vader, the conflict has begun. Theater commanders await your orders."
"Raise them, Commander, and join me in the situation room."
Leaving the bridge, Vader entered an adjacent cabin space just as holoimages were resolving above a ring of several holo-projectors. Appo came through the hatch behind him, waiting at the perimeter of the ring.
Members of the Emperor's new admiralty, the commanders were human, attired in formfitting jackets and trousers. Certainly each of them had been informed that Vader was to be treated with the same respect they showed the Emperor, but Vader could see in their ghostly faces that they had yet to make up their minds about him. Was he man, machine, something in between? Was he clone, apostate Jedi, Sith?
Kashyyyk would tell them all they needed to know, Vader thought.
I am something to be feared.
"Commanders, I want you to position your task forces to cover all major population centers." A holomap eddied from a holoprojector outside the ring, detailing Kashyyyk and the tree-cites of Kachirho, Rwookrrorro, Kepitenochan, Okikuti, Chenachochan, and others. "Furthermore, I want Interdictor cruisers deployed to prevent any ships from jumping to hyperspace."
"Admiral Vader," one of the men said. "The Wookiees have no ranged weapons or planetary defense shields. Orbital bombardment would simplify matters greatly."
Vader decided not to make an issue of the misplaced honorific. "Perhaps, Commander," he said, "if this were an exercise in obliteration. But since it isn't, we'll adhere to my plan."
"I've had some experience with the Wookiees," another said. "They won't be taken into captivity without a fight."
"I fully expect a fight, Commander," Vader said. "But I want as many as possible taken alive—males, females, and younglings. Order your troops to drive them from their tree-cities into open spaces. Then use whatever means are at our disposal to disarm and subdue them."
"Kashyyyk hosts many merchants," a third said, leadingly.
"Casualties of war, Commander."
"Do you intend to occupy the planet?" the same asked.
"That is not my intention."
"Excuse me, sir, but what, then, are we supposed to d
o with tens of thousands of Wookiee captives?"
Vader faced the one who had challenged him. "Herd them into containment and keep them contained until they have accepted their defeat. You will then receive further orders."
"From whom?" the challenger said.
"From me, Commander."
The officer folded his arms in mild defiance. "From you."
"You seem to have a problem with that. Perhaps you wish to speak with the Emperor?"
The officer was quick to adopt a more military pose. "No, of course not . . . Lord Vader."
Better and better, Vader thought.
"Where will you be, Lord Vader?" the first asked.
Vader looked at all of them before answering. "My task needn't concern you. You have your orders. Now carry them out."
Try as she might to convince herself that her actions were justified, that the clone army had become the enemy not only of the Jedi but also of democracy and freedom, Starstone couldn't surrender herself fully to combat. Brought into being to serve the Republic, the troopers, like the Jedi, had fallen victim to Palpatine's treachery. And now they were dying at the hands of those who had helped create them.
This is wrong, all wrong, she told herself.
And yet, clearly, the notion of tragic irony hadn't been incorporated into the clones' programming. The troopers were out to kill her. Only the flashing blue blade of her lightsaber stood between her and certain death.
The stormtroopers who had been the first to land were already dead, from blaster rounds, bowcaster quarrels, lightsaber slashes, blows from war clubs and the occasional giant, shaggy fist. But more and more Imperial craft were dropping from the wan sky—gunships, troop carriers, scores of two-person infantry support platforms. Worse, word had it that the incursion wasn't confined to Kachirho, but was being repeated in tree-cites worldwide.
If the hearsay was true, then the Jedi weren't the priority. The Empire was merely using their presence to justify a full-scale invasion. And the fact that Imperial forces were refraining from launching orbital bombardments told Starstone that the ultimate goal was something other than speciecide.
The troopers had been ordered not to amass high body counts, but to return with prisoners.
Starstone held herself accountable. Inevitable or not, she had furnished the Empire with grounds to invade. Forte and Kulka were wrong to have deferred to her lead. She was not a Master. She should have listened to Shryne.
The surround of towering cliffs and trees made it difficult for large vessels to hover or land outside the perimeter of the landing platform. The lake that fronted Kachirho was expansive enough to accommodate a Victory-class Star Destroyer, but a subsequent offensive would entail storming the shoreline, as the Separatists had attempted to do, and Kachirho, at almost four hundred meters in height, presented a formidable battlement.
Natural fortresses, wroshyr trees not only deflected ordinary blaster bolts but also provided hundreds of defensive platforms. More important, trees that had endured for thousands of years were not easily burned, let alone uprooted or felled. Without employing turbolasers and resigning themselves to massive death tolls, Imperial forces faced a grueling battle.
Judging by the manner in which they had deployed the gunships and troop carriers, Kashyyyk's theater commanders were relying on the fact that the Wookiees had no ranged weapons and little in the way of anti-aircraft defense. But the Imperials had failed to take into account the thousands of war machines that had been abandoned by Separatist and Republic forces alike following the fierce engagement on the Wawaatt Archipelago—tank droids, missile platforms, spider and crab droids, All Terrain Walkers and juggernauts. And just now the Wookiees were putting all that they had salvaged to good use.
Imperial gunships were unable to descend below treetop level without the risk of being blown from the sky by commandeered artillery that had been moved to Kachirho's loftiest platforms, or by fluttercraft retrofitted with laser cannons. Closer to the ground, those gunships that succeeded in evading the fire and flak found themselves set upon by flights of catamarans mounted with rocket launchers and repeating blasters.
Troopers attempting to rappel from incapacitated ships were picked off by hails of bowcaster quarrels, blaster bolts fired from rifles taller than Starstone, sometimes bands of Wookiees swinging out from the tree-city platforms on braided vines. The few troopers who survived the airborne barrages and reached the ground faced focused fire from blaster nests high in the trees, volleys of grenades, and showers of red-hot debris sizzling down through the leafy canopy.
Fighting alongside Tarfful, Chewbacca, and hundreds of Wookiee warriors, Starstone and the other Jedi were still involved in the chaotic fray on the landing platform. Employing carved shields and eccentric blasters, Wookiee females fought as ferociously as the males, and many of the offworld merchants were pitching in, recognizing that the Empire had no intention of sparing them. Weapons cleverly concealed in drop ships and transports were targeting anything the Wookiees missed, and many ferries were racing up the well, intent on carrying entire Wookiee families to safety.
In areas where there were lulls in the fighting, many Wookiee females and younglings were falling back toward the tree-city, or evacuating Kachirho's lower levels for the refuge of the high forest.
Starstone wondered just how much the Empire was willing to risk at Kashyyyk. Had Palpatine's minions considered that, faced with captivity, the Wookiees might flee their arboreal cities and become a rebel force the likes of which the Grand Army had yet to confront?
The thought provided her with a moment of solace.
Then she glimpsed something that sent her heart racing.
Sensing her sudden distraction, Forte and Kulka followed her gaze to midlevel Kachirho, where a black Imperial shuttle was drifting in for a landing on one of the tree-city's enormous balconies.
"It's Vader," Starstone said when the two Jedi Knights asked. "Are you certain?" Forte said.
At Starstone's nod, Kulka gestured broadly to the ongoing fight. "This is more about us than the Wookiees even know."
Starstone shut her eyes briefly and forced a determined exhalation. "Then it's up to us to make this about Vader
40
Leading an exodus of women and younglings from Kachirho's lowest levels, Chewbacca thought about his own family in distant Rwookrrorro, which apparently was also under siege. Rwookrrorro was days away on foot, but only minutes by ship. He would get there one way or another.
Off to his left, the six Jedi who had been fighting alongside him for the better part of a local hour were suddenly racing back toward Kachirho's central wroshyr. Lifting his eyes, Chewbacca saw no significant threat, save for a Theta-class shuttle that was taking heavy fire as it attempted to fold its wings and settle on one of the tree-city balconies.
Higher up, the sky was crisscrossed by laserfire and contrails, and still filling with gunships, eerily reminiscent of what had happened only weeks earlier, when the Separatists had launched their invasion. Wookiee fluttercraft and an assortment of traders' vessels were engaging the Imperial ships, but the outcome was clear.
The sheer number of descending gunships gave evidence of a sizable flotilla of capital ships in orbit. For all the Wookiees' success in repelling the first wave, it was surely only a matter of time before the Star Destroyers would open fire. And then only a matter of time until Kashyyyk fell.
Anyone who thought that the Jedi were responsible for having brought the Empire down on Kashyyyk had no understanding of the nature of power. From the moment the troopers of Commander Gree's brigade had turned on Yoda, Unduli, and Vos, Chewbacca, Tarfful, and the elders of Kachirho had grasped the truth: that despite all the rhetoric about taxation, free trade, and decentralization, there was no real difference between the Confederacy and the Republic. The war was nothing more than a struggle between two evils, with the jedi caught in the middle, all because of their misplaced loyalty to a government they should have abandoned, and to a pledge that
had superseded their oath to serve the Force above all.
If there was any difference between the Separatists and the newly born Imperialists, it was that the latter needed to legitimize their invasion and occupation, lest other threatened species rebel while they stood a fighting chance.
But a planet could fall without its species being defeated; a planet could be occupied without its species being imprisoned. That was what separated Kashyyyk from the rest.
Back- and hip-packs bulging with survival food and rations, Wookiees were streaming down the city staircases, racing across the footbridges, and disappearing into the thick vegetation that surrounded the lake. Blazed as a defense against sneak attacks by Trandoshan slavers, hundreds of well-maintained evacuation routes cached with arms and supplies radiated from Kachirho and wove through the isolated rock outcroppings to the high forest beyond.
More to the point, Wookiees even as young as twelve, fresh from their coming-of-age hrrtayyk ceremonies, knew how to construct shelters from saplings, how to fashion implements from the stalks of giant leaves, and how to make rope. They knew which plants and insects were edible; the location of freshwater springs; the areas where dangerous reptiles or predatory felines lurked.
Despite all the elements of high technology they had incorporated into their lives, Wookiees never considered themselves separate from Kashyyyk's grand forest, which on its own could provide them everything they needed to survive, for as long as necessary.
Targeted by unexpected anti-aircraft fire, Vader's shuttle jinked for the largest of the Kachirho's arboreal balconies, its powerful defensive shields raised and its quad lasers spewing unrelenting fire at a pair of hailfire droids the Wookiees had hoisted into their massive tree-fortress. Bolts from the shuttle's forward weapons reduced the missile platforms to slagged heaps and chewed into the balcony's wooden columns and beams, filling the air with splinters hard as nails. The explosions flung the bodies of Kachirho's furry defenders far and wide. Hurled clear off the tier, some plummeted to the ground a hundred meters below.
In the cabin space of the shaken shuttle, Vader was being addressed by the holoimage of one of the task force commanders.
