“Then all the vidscrolls stopped working. The Empire sold us new devices that let them control what we could see and read. Luckily, they overlooked a few obsolete models, like mine.”
She pulled the vidscroll back off her belt and spread it out. She tapped and clicked the cylinders until the screen showed pictures. Pictures of stormtroopers marching prisoners through the streets, shooting an unarmed Oktarian, using an AT-ST to blast holes in a building.
“HGRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!”
These scenes were all too familiar to Chewbacca. He had seen the same things on many planets, including his own.
“MRRROONNOG COGL MROOONG…” He stopped ranting when he remembered Mayv couldn’t understand him. But she had understood him well enough.
“The false hope was gone, and most Oktarians had no hope at all left. But not my parents. They had a plan. They were going to break into the central library and steal the most important books, then find some way to reproduce them and spread them so that the Mola Oktaro would again be available to everyone.
“I was terrified, watching my usually peaceful parents strap on weapons and slip out of the house in the middle of the night. I didn’t know if they’d ever come back.
“They did…empty-handed. Their plan to break into the library had worked, but there was nothing to steal. Everything was gone. My parents were able to learn that everything had been packed up and sent to Coruscant for ‘processing.’ The same thing had happened at other museums, libraries, and schools. Even the Mola Oktaro had been taken.
“My father began to make plans with some smugglers to sneak off-planet. To travel to Coruscant and rescue the Mola Oktaro. Hmmph…he had no idea what Coruscant is. How big, how heartless, how impossible.
“And he never found out. He and my mother were arrested. Not because of their plan, but just because the Empire needed workers to replace the ones dying in the desert. So I took my father’s place on the smuggler’s ship. I went to Coruscant to get our Mola Oktaro back.
“And I learned how big and heartless Coruscant is…but not impossible.
“In the black markets at the lowest levels of Coruscant, I found one of our books. Not the Mola Oktaro but an important book of ancient songs. I couldn’t afford it. So I stole it. I was almost caught, so I was more careful the next time. And the next time. And the next. And I became quite good at stealing things.
“But not good enough. Sim Aloo caught me. One of his guards, I mean. Aloo has warehouses full of books, artwork, jewelry, everything. Not just from Oktaro, from all over the galaxy. All that stuff in Alinka’s apartment? That’s just a sliver of it. The things that caught her eye.
“And that book she held up? That was the Mola Oktaro itself. My parents believed that book alone could restore hope to the Oktarians. And I believe it, too. I have to.
“I can’t save my parents—I really don’t think I’ll ever see them again—but I can try to save that book.
“And I’ll do anything to get it…even help Aloo steal from somewhere else.”
Chewie could not tell her his own story…and how similar some parts of it were to hers. His planet caught up in the Clone Wars, then crushed under Imperial rule. His culture looted, his people captured, he himself imprisoned on the planet Mimban.
But like I said, Shyriiwook is a remarkable language. Even those who don’t understand it can often understand it.
So when Mayv finished her story and the Wookiee let out a long string of howls and yowls, punctuated by shaken fists and bared teeth…Mayv knew that they were on the same side. He would help her and she would help him.
But first, Chewie proclaimed, he was going to get some rest. By the time Mayv figured out that was what he’d said, he was already dozing off, with the golden tooka cat contentedly purring away on his lap.
She couldn’t believe he was able to sleep.
She needed to settle her brain down a little so she could think. So she did what any Oktarian would do: she repainted the triangles on her forehead.
She unclipped a small triangular tube from her tool belt. It had caps on both ends. She uncapped one end and used the spongy material inside to wipe off the old triangles.
The other end had a similar sponge, but it was soaked in golden paint. She pressed it against her forehead and stamped a series of the gold triangles, or treblixes, that all Oktarians wore.
There was no need for a mirror; she had been doing this several times a day since she could remember. When she was finished, the triangles formed a circle with tips facing inward: the Oktarian symbol for quick thinking, which she thought might help her now.
If nothing else, the act had calmed her down. She was ready to go find the droid and see what information Alinka had given him.
“Why didn’t you tell us you had information about the mission?” she asked him as he handed over a data chip.
“You did not ask for information about the mission,” replied K-2.
“Oktar Kleepus,” she grumbled in Oktarian—and I am definitely not translating that.
She plugged the chip into her vidscroll, and some old Separatist mining reports popped up. Dull stuff, but Mayv started reading eagerly, glad to finally get some solid information about their destination.
The rest of the tooka cats, realizing that the excitement was over, fell into a sleepy heap.
And K-2 was busy transmitting everything he had heard back to the rebel base, where Cassian was waiting to hear it.
“MRRRRUH?”
Chewie hated being woken up from a nap by getting bounced out of his chair because the ship was out of control.
“MYOWWR!”
Tookas hated getting bounced off of a cozy Wookiee lap for any reason.
“HGRRYYYRR!”
That was a happy growl—yes, Wookiees can growl happily—because the ship had dropped out of hyperspace and the manual controls were working again. The ship was bouncing through the upper atmosphere of Ushruu, and Chewie had to scramble to get the sublight engines fired and the ship into a landing cycle.
Then he realized that he had no idea where to land.
“NHYRR MRRRABAKGH?” he bellowed over his shoulder.
Mayv came stumbling into the cockpit and shielded her eyes against the bright light shining through the viewport from the planet’s surface.
“Yeah, that looks like it!” she yelled. “Ushruu is basically one big blue forest. Although the forest won’t be anything like—”
“NHYRRRR?” Chewbacca insisted, waving one arm at the planet.
“Oh, you want to know where to land?”
“MRPH!”
“Try these coordinates,” she said, holding out her vidscroll and pointing to a string of numbers. “After reading through the reports, I agree with Alinka and think that’s probably our best—whoa!”
Mayv fell into the copilot’s chair as Chewie pulled the ship out of its dive and veered toward the site Mayv had chosen.
Meanwhile, there was a series of clanks, thuds, and yowls from the cargo hold, where K-2 and the tookas had also been thrown off balance.
“MYARRN WROONGLL!” Chewie called out, explaining that it wasn’t his fault, it was the cruddy ship.
Chewie missed the Falcon. And then, as they swooped low over the trees, he missed Kashyyyk.
Listen, as far as these tall blue things go, I’m just going to call them trees. Obviously, they weren’t like the trees on Kashyyyk or Endor or anywhere else.
But we don’t know what the inhabitants of the planet called them, because they’re all gone. And there’s never been a proper scientific exploration of the planet, and even if there had been, the scientists just would have given the trees a long name like mycollibrachiflorawumpus, and it would be silly for me to call them that over and over again.
The cyborg mining scouts who found and explored the planet took one look at the things, saw that they were tall, had branches, and stuck out of the ground, and decided they were trees.
But you or I would have taken one look an
d called them fungus. There were no leaves. Each branch either split into more branches or ended in a sort of blobby cluster. And instead of bark, they had a tough skin that looked like it would ooze something nasty if cut open.
If you found a small one, you’d be careful not to step on it, because it would surely squish and stick to your shoe.
Other than being a little gross, they weren’t all that exciting, really, and you wouldn’t even notice them if they weren’t hundreds of meters tall and covering the entire surface of the planet.
As for what to call them, fungus or trees—they looked enough like trees that they reminded Chewie of the wroshyr trees he grew up on. And he knew a lot more about trees than you or I do.
So: trees.
“MURGHHHHH GRRBOKGH!”
That was Chewie’s version of one of Han’s favorite expressions: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
And he did have a bad feeling. But no idea why.
He should have been happy. He was doing what he liked: flying around the galaxy, in control, nobody shooting at him, no spaceport controller barking orders about where to land.
And yet the closer they flew to the planet’s surface, the more nervous he got. Not about Han being held prisoner back on Coruscant. No, it was something on the planet that was bothering him.
It appeared to be bothering Mayv, too.
“You know what’s weird? I wasn’t scared about this job at all until we got here,” she said. “Now I’ve got this creepy feeling and we haven’t even seen anything scary.”
“GRAGGIT!” agreed Chewie, then he added, “MYEEERRRRR,” and pointed at something far off to the right. Something spiky and black and huge.
“Yikes, that does look scary,” said Mayv. “Looks like one of the abandoned cities mentioned in the mining report. Can we veer off course to take a look?”
Chewie turned toward the black spikes, taking the ship in lower over the forest.
Apparently, the golden tooka—whom Mayv had named Goldie—had a bad feeling, too, because the lower the ship got, the more she tried to bury herself in Chewie’s fur.
“MHHYYUUURNURR,” Chewie fussed, and made a vague attempt at shrugging the little animal off his shoulders.
The other tookas in the cargo hold were in an even worse state. They could be heard yowling, crashing around, and scratching wildly on the hatch.
K-2’s voice came over the comm: “Assistance requested in the cargo bay. The cargo has become extremely annoying.”
“MURBBBBBB!” Chewie answered, without bothering to use the comm, which expressed his feeling that the cargo droid was also becoming extremely annoying.
Chewie’s bad feeling was getting worse. His nervousness was growing into fear. Chewie wasn’t used to fear, and that made him more nervous.
“FWURRRGGG…”
He was getting that sensation that makes you suddenly look behind you.
He looked behind him. Just Mayv, staring out the window and shuddering. She was trying to act like a daring criminal, not a scared kid. But she couldn’t quite manage it. Chewie didn’t blame her; the planet was creepy.
The dead city was no exception.
It had been built in a clump of about twenty trees that were considerably taller than the rest of the forest. Hundreds of windows and doors were cut into the trunks, and the trees and branches had been carved into stairs, ramps, walkways, and roads.
The Wookiee world had many cities like that, albeit in much nicer trees. But there was another difference. Chewbacca saw it but couldn’t explain it to Mayv.
The doors and windows of this city were all cut into the stalks near the tops. The lower halves of the stalks were bare and smooth. The residents of this city had wanted to live as far above the ground as possible.
“This fits with what Alinka told us and what I read in those reports,” said Mayv. “The inhabitants of this planet have been dead for centuries. Pretty sad…”
She drifted off, probably thinking of her own planet—dying under the iron rule of the Empire.
“NARNARRRRGH!” Chewie wanted to get out of there. The place was bringing up bad memories for him, too. “MHHRRUN BBBRRRUG?”
“If you’re suggesting we move on, then I say yes,” replied Mayv. “I don’t think there’s anything to find down there anyway. Let’s get back on course for those coordinates again.”
“YGHHARRR!” answered Chewie, gratefully steering away from the dead city and resetting the navicomputer.
Along the way, they saw another presumably dead city but didn’t veer off to investigate it.
They also heard so many more complaints from K-2 that Mayv opened the door and let the tookas crowd into the control room. She tried to comfort some of the cats, but only being close to Chewbacca seemed to satisfy them.
“BWURHHHHRR!” he complained, but Mayv only laughed.
“Oh, come on, put the ship on autopilot and cuddle them a bit! I’ve read that it can be very calming to have a pet during stressful situations.”
“VURRR NAGBIT!” grumbled Chewie, pointing out that one pet might be calming, but twenty was way too many. The purring alone was enough to drive a Wookiee mad.
“Enjoy yourself,” said Mayv. “I’m going to poke around in the cargo hold and see if there’s anything back there that might be useful to us. The reports mentioned some dangerous wildlife the mining scouts called snarlers and sniffers, and I’m not interested in leaving the ship unarmed.”
“VLARRRR MUURRRGH RRGGGG LURRRR! BRRR-ANNN GOOOWWRRRGH!” replied Chewie, which loosely translates to, “Find a really big weapon for me,” but sounds quite poetic in Shyriiwook.
“Blech! That smell!” Mayv gasped when she got to the cargo hold. “Kay-Tu, can you clean up some of this cat mess for us?”
“No.”
“What do you mean ‘no’?”
“You do it.”
“Are you malfunctioning? I asked you to clean up!”
K-2SO was about to say something very rude indeed when he remembered that he was supposed to be K-2SB, a cooperative cargo droid. But not that cooperative, he decided.
“I am not equipped or programmed to complete that request.”
“You’re telling me that you can’t pick up a little tooka poop?”
“That is what I am telling you. Also, it is not a little. It is a lot of tooka…waste material.”
Mayv glared at the droid, and he stared back at her with an irritatingly blank expression. He then watched as she opened a maintenance locker, dug out some cleaning supplies, and started to do the job herself.
While she was cleaning up, she made a mental inventory of anything on the ship that might be useful. There wasn’t much.
In the maintenance locker, she found something that appealed to her…an exo-glove, meant to give crewmembers a much longer reach when working in tight spaces. It was basically a large metal glove with servomotors to strengthen grip. If something was out of reach, it could extend forward and grab it. And as countless dockworkers in countless spaceports knew well, it packed a heck of a punch in a fight.
Sharing a ship with a Wookiee and a towering cargo droid was making Mayv feel pretty short. This would at least give her a longer reach.
She didn’t find anything like a Wookiee weapon, but she did find a carton of ration sticks, which she was pretty sure Chewie would appreciate.
With all the creepy sensations and anxiety she was feeling, she decided to take the ship’s medkit along, too. Ushruu just didn’t seem safe.
The only other thing she saw that looked useful was a roll of cable, so she grabbed that, too, and then dumped everything into a crate.
“I suppose you’re going to want me to carry that thing around,” said K-2.
“What is your deal?” snapped Mayv. “Isn’t your whole purpose to move stuff around?”
“I have been instructed to bring back valuable cargo, not move nonessential ‘stuff’ around.”
“Well, first of all, we don’t know what will or won�
�t be essential. And second of all, it literally weighs nothing because it’s an antigrav crate.”
“And I suppose you’re going to want me to carry it around?”
Mayv was about to launch into another lecture, but she decided just to say, “Yes, I want you to carry it around.”
“Okay,” said K-2.
“GRRRRRR!” That was Mayv, not Chewie, by the way. This droid, thought Mayv, is not only very annoying but also very strange. Broken or deranged or glitched or something.
And suddenly, it occurred to her that she was stuck on a strange planet with a malfunctioning droid, an easily enraged Wookiee, and a herd of small, unhousebroken furry dragons.
What she didn’t know was that she was just minutes away from adding “pack of hungry snarlers” to that list.
“MLARRRG!”
Mayv didn’t know what that meant, but she could tell she was being called back to the cockpit.
She opened the door and was nearly knocked down by the herd of tookas that charged through to the cargo hold. They were so worked up now that even Chewie couldn’t calm them. They just wanted off the ship!
Mayv closed the door behind them so she and Chewie could concentrate on whatever mlarrrg meant.
“MLARRRRRRRGGGH!” Chewie repeated, pointing at the planet’s surface.
Mayv looked and then jerked her head away in horror. She had to force herself to look again.
It was a great crack in the planet’s surface, probably twenty klicks long. From deep inside the rift came an awful green glow—more than just light, almost a mist, almost alive.
Although they couldn’t properly discuss it, Chewie and Mayv were thinking the same thing.
The uneasy feeling they got as they neared the planet’s surface was much stronger there…as if it was leaking out of the planet through the chasm.
And yet, what was it really? A crack in the ground and some green mist? There was nothing particularly scary about that.
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