by James Luceno
He waved her away with an impatient growl. [He is right,] Ralrra agreed. [We must get you away from herre, beforre the second attack comes.]
From somewhere outside a Wookiee began howling an alert. “There won’t be a second attack,” she told Ralrra. “They’ve been noticed—there’ll be people converging on this house in minutes.”
[Not on this house,] Ralrra rumbled, a strange grimness to his voice. [Therre is a firre fourr houses away.]
Leia stared at him, a chill running up her back. “A diversion,” she murmured. “They set a house on fire to mask any alert you try to make.”
Chewbacca growled an affirmative. [We must get you away from herre,] Ralrra repeated, easing himself carefully upright.
Leia glanced past him through the doorway to the darker hallway beyond, a strange dread suddenly twisting into her stomach. There had been three Wookiees in the house with her. “Where’s Salporin?” she asked.
Ralrra hesitated, just long enough for her suspicions to become a terrible certainty. [He did not survive the attack,] the Wookiee said, almost too softly for her to hear.
Leia swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” she said, the words sounding painfully trite and meaningless in her ears.
[As arre we. But the time forr mourning is not now.]
Leia nodded, blinking back sudden tears as she turned to the window. She’d lost many friends and companions in the midst of battle through the years, and she knew that Ralrra was right. But all the logic in the universe didn’t make it any easier.
There were no aliens visible outside. But they were there—that much she was sure of. Both of the previous teams she and Han had tangled with had consisted of considerably more than five members, and there was no reason to expect this one to be any different. Chances were that any attempt to escape overland would meet with a quick ambush.
Worse, as soon as the hue and cry over the burning house really got going, the aliens could likely launch a second attack with impunity, counting on the commotion down the street to cover up any noise they made in the process.
She glanced at the burning house, feeling a brief pang of guilt for the Wookiees who owned it. Resolutely, she forced the emotion out of her mind. There, too, there was nothing she could do for now. “The aliens seem to want me alive,” she said, dropping the edge of the curtain and turning back to Chewbacca and Ralrra. “If we can get the sled into the sky, they probably won’t try to shoot us down.”
[Do you trust the sled?] Ralrra asked pointedly.
Leia stopped short, lips pressed tightly together in annoyance with herself. No, of course she didn’t trust the sled—the first thing the aliens would have done would have been to disable any escape vehicle within reach. Disable it, or worse: they could have modified it to simply fly her directly into their arms.
She couldn’t stay put; she couldn’t go sideways; and she couldn’t go up. Which left exactly one direction.
“I’ll need some rope,” she said, scooping up an armful of clothes and starting to get dressed. “Strong enough to hold my weight.2 As much as you’ve got.”
They were fast, all right. A quick glance between them—[You cannot be serious,] Ralrra told her. [The dangerr would be great even forr a Wookiee. Forr a human it would be suicide.]
“I don’t think so,” Leia shook her head, pulling on her boots. “I saw how the branches twist together, when we looked at the bottom of the city. It should be possible for me to climb along between them.”
[You will neverr reach the landing platform alone,] Ralrra objected. [We will come with you.]
“You’re in no shape to travel down the street, let alone underneath it,” Leia countered bluntly. She picked up her blaster, holstered it, and stepped to the doorway. “Neither is Chewbacca. Get out of my way, please.”
Ralrra didn’t budge. [You do not fool us, Leiaorganasolo. You believe that if we stay herre the enemy will follow you and leave us in peace.]
Leia grimaced. So much for the quiet, noble self-sacrifice. “There’s a good chance they will,” she insisted. “It’s me they want. And they want me alive.”
[Therre is no time to argue,] Ralrra said. [We will stay togetherr. Herre, orr underr the city.]
Leia took a deep breath. She didn’t like it, but it was clear she wasn’t going to be able to talk them out of it. “All right, you win.” She sighed. The alien Chewbacca had hit was still lying unconscious, and for a moment she debated whether or not they dared take the time to tie him up. The need for haste won. “Let’s find some rope and get moving.”
And besides, a small voice in the back of her head reminded her, even if she went alone, the aliens might still attack the house. And might prefer leaving no witnesses behind.
The flat, somewhat spongy material that formed the “ground” of Rwookrrorro was less than a meter thick. Leia’s lightsaber cut through both it and the house’s floor with ease, dropping a roughly square chunk between the braided branches to vanish into the darkness below.
[I will go first,] Ralrra said, dropping into the hole before anyone could argue the point. He was still moving a little slowly, but at least the stun-induced dizzy spells seemed to have passed.
Leia looked up as Chewbacca stepped close to her and flipped Ralrra’s baldric around her shoulders. “Last chance to change your mind about this arrangement,” she warned him.
His answer was short and to the point. By the time Ralrra’s quiet [All clearr] floated up, they were ready.
And with Leia strapped firmly to his torso, Chewbacca eased his way through the hole.
Leia had fully expected the experience to be unpleasant. She hadn’t realized that it was going to be terrifying, as well. The Wookiees didn’t crawl across the tops of the plaited branches, the way she’d anticipated doing. Instead, using the climbing claws she’d seen her first day here, they hung by all fours underneath the branches to travel.
And then they traveled.
The side of her face pressed against Chewbacca’s hairy chest, Leia clenched her teeth tightly together, partly to keep them from chattering with the bouncing, but mostly to keep moans of fear from escaping. It was like the acrophobia she’d felt in the liftcar, multiplied by a thousand. Here, there wasn’t even a relatively thick vine between her and the nothingness below—only Wookiee claws and the thin rope connecting them to another set of Wookiee claws. She wanted to say something—to plead that they stop and at least belay the end of their rope to something solid—but she was afraid to make even a sound lest it break Chewbacca’s concentration. The sound of his breathing was like the roar of a waterfall in her ears, and she could feel the warm wetness of his blood seeping through the thin material of her undertunic. How badly had he been hurt? Huddled against him, listening to his heart pounding, she was afraid to ask.
Abruptly, he stopped.
She opened her eyes, unaware until that moment that she’d closed them. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice trembling.
[The enemy has found us,] Ralrra growled softly from beside her.
Bracing herself, Leia turned her head as far as she could, searching the dark predawn gray behind them. There it was: a small patch of darker black set motionlessly against it. A repulsorlift airspeeder of some kind, staying well back out of bowcaster range. “It couldn’t be a Wookiee rescue ship, I don’t suppose,” she offered hopefully.
Chewbacca growled the obvious flaw: the airspeeder wasn’t showing even running lights. [Yet it does not approach,] Ralrra pointed out.
“They want me alive,” Leia said, more to reassure herself than to remind them. “They don’t want to spook us.” She looked around, searching the void around them and the matted branches above them for inspiration.
And found it. “I need the rest of the rope,” she told Ralrra, peering back at the hovering airspeeder. “All of it.”
Steeling herself, she twisted partway around in her makeshift harness, taking the coil he gave her and tying one end securely to one of the smaller branches. Chewbacc
a growled an objection. “No, I’m not belaying us,” she assured him. “So don’t fall. I’ve got something else in mind. Okay, let’s go.”
They set off again, perhaps a shade faster than before … and as she bounced along against Chewbacca’s torso, Leia realized with mild surprise that while she was still frightened, she was no longer terrified. Perhaps, she decided, because she was no longer simply a pawn or excess baggage, with her fate totally in the hands of Wookiees or gray-skinned aliens or the forces of gravity. She was now at least partially in control of what happened.
They continued on, Leia playing out the rope as they traveled. The dark airspeeder followed, still without lights, still keeping well back from them. She kept an eye on it as they bounced along, knowing that the timing and distance on this were going to be crucial. Just a little bit farther …
There were perhaps three meters of rope left in the coil. Quickly, she tied a firm knot and peered back at their pursuer. “Get ready,” she said to Chewbacca. “Now … stop.”
Chewbacca came to a halt. Mentally crossing her fingers, Leia ignited her lightsaber beneath the Wookiee’s back, locked it on, and let it drop.
And like a blazing chunk of wayward lightning, it fell away, swinging down and back on the end of the rope in a long pendulum arc. It reached bottom and swung back up the other direction—
And into the underside of the airspeeder.
There was a spectacular flash as the lightsaber blade sliced through the repulsorlift generator. An instant later the airspeeder was dropping like a stone, two separate blazes flaring from either side. The craft fell into the mists below, and for a long moment the fires were visible as first two, and then as a single diffuse spot of light. Then even that faded, leaving only the lightsaber swinging gently in the darkness.
Leia took a shuddering breath. “Let’s go retrieve the lightsaber,” she told Chewbacca. “After that, I think we can probably just cut our way back up. I doubt there are any of them left now.”
[And then directly to yourr ship?] Ralrra asked as they headed back to the branch where she’d tied the rope.
Leia hesitated, the image of that second alien in her room coming back to mind. Standing there facing her, an unreadable emotion in face and body language, so stunned or enraptured or frightened that he didn’t even notice Chewbacca’s entry … “Back to the ship,” she answered Ralrra. “But not directly”
The alien was sitting motionless in a low seat in the tiny police interrogation room, a small bandage on the side of his head the only external evidence of Chewbacca’s blow. His hands were resting in his lap, the fingers laced intricately together. Stripped of all clothing and equipment, he’d been given a loose Wookiee robe to wear. On someone else the effect of the outsized garment might have been comical. But not on him. Neither the robe nor his inactivity did anything to hide the aura of deadly competence that he wore like a second skin. He was—probably always would be—a member of a dangerous and persistent group of trained killing machines.3
And he’d asked specifically to see Leia. In person.
Towering beside her, Chewbacca growled one final objection. “I don’t much like it either,” Leia conceded, gazing at the monitor display and trying to screw up her courage. “But he let me go back at the house, before you came in. I want to know—I need to know—what that was all about.”
Briefly, her conversation with Luke on the eve of the Battle of Endor flashed to mind. His quiet firmness, in the face of all her fears, that confronting Darth Vader was something he had to do. That decision had nearly killed him … and had ultimately brought them victory.
But Luke had felt some faint wisps of good still buried deep inside Vader. Did she feel something similar in this alien killer? Or was she driven merely by morbid curiosity?
Or perhaps by mercy?
“You can watch and listen from here,” she told Chewbacca, handing him her blaster and stepping to the door. The lightsaber she left hooked onto her belt, though what use it would be in such close quarters she didn’t know. “Don’t come in unless I’m in trouble.” Taking a deep breath, she unlocked the door and pressed the release.
The alien looked up as the door slid open, and it seemed to Leia that he sat up straighter as she stepped inside. The door slid shut behind her, and for a long moment they just eyed each other. “I’m Leia Organa Solo,” she said at last. “You wanted to talk to me?”
He gazed at her for another moment. Then, slowly, he stood up and reached out a hand. “Your hand,” he said, his voice gravelly and strangely accented. “May I have it?”
Leia took a step forward and offered him her hand, acutely aware that she had just committed an irrevocable act of trust. From here, if he so chose, he could pull her to him and snap her neck before anyone outside could possibly intervene.
He didn’t pull her toward him. Leaning forward, holding her hand in an oddly gentle grip, he raised it to his snout and pressed it against two large nostrils half hidden beneath strands of hair.
And smelled it.
He smelled it again, and again, taking long, deep breaths. Leia found herself staring at his nostrils, noticing for the first time their size and the soft flexibility of the skin folds around them. Like those of a tracking animal, she realized. A memory flashed to mind: how, as he’d held her helpless back at the house, those same nostrils had been pressed into her neck.
And right after that was when he’d let her go …
Slowly, almost tenderly, the alien straightened up. “It is then true,” he grated, releasing her hand and letting his own fall to his side. Those huge eyes stared at her, brimming with an emotion whose nature her Jedi skills could vaguely sense but couldn’t begin to identify. “I was not mistaken before.”
Abruptly, he dropped to both knees. “I seek forgiveness, Leia Organa Solo, for my actions,” he said, ducking his head to the floor, his hands splayed out to the sides as they had been in that encounter back at the house. “Our orders did not identify you, but gave only your name.”
“I understand.” She nodded, wishing she did. “But now you know who I am?”
The alien’s face dropped a couple of centimeters closer to the floor. “You are the Mal’ary’ush,” he said. “The daughter and heir of the Lord Darth Vader.
“He who was our master.”
Leia stared down at him, feeling her mouth fall open as she struggled to regain her mental balance. The right-angle turns were all coming too quickly. “Your master?” she repeated carefully.
“He who came to us in our desperate need,” the alien said, his voice almost reverent. “Who lifted us from our despair, and gave us hope.”
“I see,” she managed. This whole thing was rapidly becoming unreal … but one fact already stood out. The alien prostrating himself before her was prepared to treat her as royalty.
And she knew how to behave like royalty.
“You may rise,” she told him, feeling her voice and posture and manner settling into the almost-forgotten patterns of the Alderaanian court. “What is your name?”
“I am called Khabarakh by our lord,” the alien said, getting to his feet. “In the language of the Noghri—” He made a long, convoluted roiling noise that Leia’s vocal cords didn’t have a hope of imitating.
“I’ll call you Khabarakh,” she said. “Your people are called the Noghri?”
“Yes.” The first hint of uncertainty seemed to cross the dark eyes. “But you are the Mal’ary’ush,” he added, with obvious question.
“My father had many secrets,” she told him grimly. “You, obviously, were one of them. You said he brought you hope. Tell me how.”
“He came to us,” the Noghri said. “After the mighty battle. After the destruction.”
“What battle?”
Khabarakh’s eyes seemed to drift into memory. “Two great starships met in the space over our world,” he said, his gravelly voice low. “Perhaps more than two; we never knew for certain. They fought all the day and much of the night �
�� and when the battle was over, our land was devastated.”
Leia winced, a pang of sympathetic ache running through her. Of ache, and of guilt. “We never hurt non-Imperial forces or worlds on purpose,” she said softly. “Whatever happened, it was an accident.”
The dark eyes fixed again on her. “The Lord Vader did not think so. He believed it was done on purpose, to drive fear and terror into the souls of the Emperor’s enemies.”
“Then the Lord Vader was mistaken,” Leia said, meeting that gaze firmly. “Our battle was with the Emperor, not his subjugated servants.”
Khabarakh drew himself up stiffly. “We were not the Emperor’s servants,” he grated. “We were a simple people, content to live our lives without concern for the dealings of others.”
“You serve the Empire now,” Leia pointed out.
“In return for the Emperor’s help,” Khabarakh said, a hint of pride showing through his deference. “Only he came to our aid when we so desperately needed it. In his memory, we serve his designated heir—the man to whom the Lord Vader long ago entrusted us.”
“I find it difficult to believe the Emperor ever really cared about you,” Leia told him bluntly. “That’s not the sort of man he was. All he cared about was obtaining your service against us.”
“Only he came to our aid,” Khabarakh repeated.
“Because we were unaware of your plight,” Leia told him.
“So you say.”
Leia raised her eyebrows. “Then give me a chance to prove it. Tell me where your world is.”
Khabarakh jerked back. “That is impossible. You would seek us out and complete the destruction—”
“Khabarakh,” Leia cut him off. “Who am I?”
The folds around the Noghri’s nostrils seemed to flatten. “You are the Lady Vader. The Mal’ary’ush.”
“Did the Lord Vader ever lie to you?”
“You said he did.”
“I said he was mistaken,” Leia reminded him, perspiration starting to collect beneath her collar as she recognized the knife edge she was now walking along here. Her newfound status with Khabarakh rested solely on the Noghri’s reverence for Darth Vader. Somehow, she had to attack Vader’s words without simultaneously damaging that respect. “Even the Lord Vader could be deceived … and the Emperor was a master of deception.”