by James Luceno
Leaving the bridge, Vader entered an adjacent cabin space just as holoimages were resolving above a ring of several holoprojectors. 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 do 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 balco
nies.
“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.”
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.
“Our circumspect attacks are being repulsed planetwide, Lord Vader. As I thought I made clear, Wookiees do not take lightly to the threat of captivity. Already they’re abandoning the tree-cities for the high forests. If they penetrate deeply enough, we will need months, perhaps years to find and root them out. Even then, the cost to us will be great, in terms of matériel and lives.”
Vader muted the holoprojector’s audio pickup and glanced across the aisle to Commander Appo. “Do you concur, Commander?”
“As it is we’re losing too many troopers,” Appo said without hesitation. “Grant permission to the naval commanders to initiate surgical bombardment from orbit.”
Vader mulled it over for a moment. He didn’t like being wrong, much less admitting that he had been wrong, but he saw no way out. “You may commence bombardment, Commander, but make certain you save Kachirho for last. I have business to finish up here.”
As the holoimage faded, Vader turned to the cabin’s small porthole, meditating on the whereabouts of his Jedi quarries, and what nature of trap they had set for him. The thought of confronting them stirred his impatience and his anger.
Wings uplifted, the shuttle made a rough landing on the tier, bolts from Wookiee blasters careening from the fuselage. When the boarding ramp had extended, Appo and his stormtroopers hurried outside, Vader right behind him, his ignited blade deflecting fire from all sides.
Three troopers fell before they made it two meters from the ramp.
The Wookiees were dug in, shooting from behind makeshift barricades and from crossbeams high above the balcony. Raising the shuttle on repulsorlift power, the clone pilot took the craft through a 180-degree sweep, drenching the area with laserfire. At the same time, two Wookiees with satchel charges slung over their shoulders rushed from cover and managed to hurl the explosives through the shuttle’s open hatch. A deafening explosion blew off one of the wings and sent the craft spinning and skidding to the very rim of the tier.
Counterattacking, Vader strode through fountaining flames to take the fight to the Wookiees. Crimson blade slashing left and right, he parried blaster bolts and amputated limbs and heads. Caterwauling and howling, showing their fangs and waving their long arms about, the Wookiees tried to hold their positions, but they had never faced anything like him, even in the darkest depths of Kashyyyk’s primeval forest.
As tall as some of them, Vader waded in, his lightsaber cleaving intricately carved war shields, sending blasters and bow-casters flying, setting fire to shaggy coats, leaving more than a score of bodies in his wake.
He was waving Appo and the other troopers forward when flashes of refulgent blue light caught his eye, and he swung to the source.
Emerging from a covered bridge anchored distally to the bole of the giant tree rushed six Jedi, deflecting blaster bolts from the stormtroopers as they attacked, doing to Appo’s cadre just what Vader had done to the Wookiees.
Forging through the offensive, three Jedi raced in to square off with Vader.
He recognized the petite, black-haired female among them, and tipped his blade in salute.
“You’ve saved me the trouble of looking for you, Padawan Starstone. These others must be the ones you gathered by accessing the Temple beacon.”
Starstone’s dark eyes bored into him. “You defiled the Temple by setting foot in it.”
“More than you know,” he told her.
“Then you’ll pay for that, as well.”
He angled the lightsaber in front of him, tip pointed slightly downward. “You’re very much mistaken, Padawan. It is you who will pay.”
Before Starstone co
uld make a move, Siadem Forte and Iwo Kulka stepped in front of her and attacked Vader.
As was the case with many Jedi Knights, the two were familiar with accounts of what had happened on Geonosis when Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker had gone after the Sith Lord, Count Dooku. And so Forte and Kulka went in as a team, each of them employing a radically different lightsaber style, determined to off-balance Vader.
But Vader merely stood like a statue, his blade angled toward the ground until the very instant the two Jedi unleashed their assault.
Then, as the three blades joined in scatterings of dazzling light and grating static sounds, he moved.
Forte and Kulka were skilled duelists, but Vader was not only faster than Starstone remembered him being on Murkhana against Master Chatak, but also more agile. He employed his awesome power to put a quick end to the fancy twirling of his opponents, who fell back against the hammering blows of Vader’s bloodshine blade.
Time and again the two Jedi Knights attempted to alter their style, but Vader had an answer for every lunge, parry, and riposte. His style borrowed elements from all techniques of combat, even from the highest, most dangerous levels, and his moves were crisp and unpredictable. In addition, his remarkable foresight allowed him to anticipate Forte’s and Kulka’s strategies and maneuvers, his blade always one step ahead of theirs, notwithstanding the two-handed grip he employed.
Toying with the Jedi, he grazed Forte on the left shoulder, then on the right thigh; Kulka, he pierced lightly in the abdomen, then shaved away the flesh on the right side of the Ho’Din’s face.
Seeing the two Jedi Knights drop to their knees, wincing in pain, Padawan Klossi Anno broke from where she was helping Jambe and Nam engage the stormtroopers and got to Vader one step ahead of Starstone.
Sidestepping, Vader slashed her across the back, sending her sprawling across the balcony; then he whirled on Forte and Kulka just as they were clambering to their feet and decapitated them. From behind Vader came Jambe and Nam, neither of whom was an experienced fighter and both of whom Vader immediately eliminated from the fight, amputating Jambe’s right arm, and Nam’s right leg.
