by James Luceno
Archyr’s voice issued through the cockpit enunciators as the drop ship appeared in the starboard panel of the viewport. “Close call!”
Growling irritably, Chewbacca ran a fast systems check.
“Tail singed,” Cudgel told Archyr through the comlink. “But everything else is intact.”
The drop ship remained in view to starboard.
“Half the balcony fell with the shuttle,” Archyr continued. “There isn’t much room to put down, even if you’re still fool enough to risk it. Whatever Olee has in mind, she’d better be quick about it.”
Cudgel swiveled to her. “You got that?”
She nodded as the ravaged balcony came into view, in worse shape than she had feared. Most of the rim was gone, and the few areas that still clung to the trunk of the wroshyr had been holed and crisped by turbolaser bolts. The bodies of Wookiees and stormtroopers sprawled in the spreading flames.
“I don’t see any sign of Shryne or Vader,” Archyr said over the comlink.
“Turbos could have killed them—” Cudgel started when Starstone cut him off.
“No. I would know.”
Chewbacca directed a yodeling bray at her.
“He believes you,” Cudgel translated.
Starstone leaned toward Chewbacca. “You think you can set us down?”
Chewbacca lowed dubiously, then nodded. Feathering the repulsorlift lever, he began to cheat the transport closer to the wroshyr. The craft was meters from landing when, without warning, what remained of the wooden tier sheared away from the massive trunk, taking several lower tiers with it as it disintegrated and fell.
Starstone sucked in her breath as Chewbacca pulled the ship sharply away from the bole. Half out of her chair, she focused her gaze on the cave-like opening to the tree’s dimly lighted interior and stretched out with the Force.
“They’re inside! I can feel them.”
Filli pulled her back into her chair. “There’s nothing we can do.”
Archyr’s voiced barked through the enunciator. “Gunships approaching.”
Cudgel forced her to look at him. “What would Shryne want you to do?”
She didn’t have to think about it. Blowing out her breath, she said: “Chewbacca, get us out of this.”
Relieved sighs came from Filli and Cudgel, a melancholy rumble from the Wookiee, who lifted the transport’s nose and accelerated.
“Steer clear of the lake,” Archyr warned. Again the drop ship came alongside, warding off strikes from inrushing Imperial gunships. “We’ve only got a narrow escape vector, north-northwest.”
Dodging fire, the two ships raced into a burnt-orange sunset and climbed for the stars, mingling with scores of escaping ferries and cargo haulers. Turbolaser bolts rained down from ships in orbit, and across the darkening curve of the planet, fires raged.
Lowing in anguish and pounding one giant fist on the instrument panel, Chewbacca pointed to a bright burning in the canopy.
“Rwookrrorro,” Cudgel said. “Chewbacca’s tree-village.”
The stars were just losing their shimmer when the communications suite toned. Filli routed the transmission through the cockpit speakers.
“Glad to see you’ve come to your senses,” Jula said. “Is Roan with either of you?”
“Negative, Jula,” Filli said sadly.
Save for bursts of static, the enunciator remained silent for a long moment; then Jula’s voice returned. “After Alderaan, there was nothing I could say …” Her words trailed off, but she wasn’t finished. “None of us is out of this yet, anyway. Vader or whoever’s in charge has Interdictor cruisers parked in orbit. No ships have been able to jump to hyperspace.”
“Does the Drunk Dancer have enough firepower to take on the cruiser?” Cudgel asked.
“Filli,” Jula said, “inform whoever asked that question that I’m not about to go to guns with a Detainer CC-twenty-two-hundred.”
As the transport reached the edge of Kashyyyk’s envelope, magnified views of local space showed hundreds of ships trapped in the artificial gravity well generated by the Interdictor’s powerful projectors. Interspersed among the ensnared vessels drifted the blackened husks of Separatist warships that had been there since the end of the war.
“Too bad we can’t start up one of those Sep destroyers,” Cudgel lamented. “They have guns enough to deal with that cruiser.”
Starstone and Filli looked at each other.
“We might know a way,” he said.
On Kashyyyk, rapacious fires held night at bay. The shadows of running figures crisscrossed the ground. Spilled blood shone glossy black, as black as the charred bark of the wroshyr trees.
Safe inside their plastoid shells an occupying force of stormtroopers rappelled into the burning forests, flushing fleeing Wookiees back into the open, out onto the debris-strewn landing platform, the shore of the lake, the public spaces between the tree clusters that made up Kachirho.
Imperial war machines closed in from all sides; speeders and swift boats roaring up onto the sandy banks, gunships coiling down from the treetops, Victory-class Destroyers descending from the stars, their wedge-shaped armored hulls outlined by bright running lights.
Driven from tree-city and forest, the Wookiees found themselves surrounded by companies of troopers. Male and female alike, the largest were stunned into submission or killed. And yet the Wookiees continued to fight, even the youngest among them, and often with only tooth and nail, tearing scores of troopers limb from limb before succumbing to blasterfire.
Not all of Kachirho’s tens of thousands were rounded up, but more than enough to satisfy the Empire’s current needs. Should more be needed, the troopers would know where to look for them.
Herded to the center of the landing platform with countless others, Tarfful raised his long arms above his head and loosed a mournful, stentorian roar at the heavens.
Kashyyyk had fallen.
Shryne’s slashing strike to Vader’s lower left leg, owing as much to luck as to skill, released another shower of sparks.
Vader’s enraged response was Shryne’s only assurance that he was fighting a living being. Whatever had happened to Vader, by accident or volition, he had to be more flesh-and-blood than cyborg, or he wouldn’t have raged or been able to call on the Force with such intensity.
High up in the smoke-filled latticelike room, they stood facing each other on a suspension bridge that linked two fully enclosed walkways, the gloom cut by shafts of explosive light from the continuing attack on Kachirho.
Shryne’s determination to thrust his lightsaber into the control box Vader wore on his chest had forced the Sith to adopt a more defensive style that had left his limbs vulnerable. Throughout the fight that had taken them up the room’s wooden ramps, Vader had kept his crimson blade straight out in front of him, manipulating it deftly with wrists only, elbows pressed tightly to his sides. Only when Shryne left him no choice did he shuffle his feet or leap.
“Artificial limbs and body armor seem a curious choice for a Sith,” Shryne said, poised for Vader’s riposte to his lucky strike. “Belittling to the dark side.”
Vader adjusted his grip on the sword and advanced. “No more than throwing in with smugglers denigrates the Force, Shryne.”
“Ah, but I saw the light. Maybe it’s time you did.”
“You have it backward.”
Shryne was steeling himself for a lunging attack when, abruptly, Vader halted and withdrew the blade into the lightsaber’s hilt.
Before Shryne could begin to make sense of it, he heard a creaking sound from below, and something flew at him from one of the ramps. Only a last-instant turn of his sword kept the object from striking him in the head.
It was a plank—ripped from a ramp they had taken to the bridge.
Shryne gazed in awe at unreadable Vader, then began to race toward him, blade held high over his right shoulder.
He didn’t make half the distance when a storm of similar planks and lengths of handrail ca
me whirling at him. Vader was using his dark side abilities to dismantle the ramps!
Surrendering to the guidance of the Force, Shryne swung his lightsaber in a flurry of deflecting maneuvers—side-to-side, overhead, low down, behind his back—but the floorboards were coming in larger and larger pieces, from all directions, and faster than he could parry them.
The butt end of a board struck him on the outer left thigh.
The face of a wide plank slammed him across the shoulders.
Wooden pegs flew at his face; other speared into his arms.
Then a short support post hit him squarely in the forehead, knocking the wind out of him and dropping him to his knees.
Blood running into his eyes, he fought to remain conscious, extending the lightsaber in one shaking hand while clamping the other on the bridge’s handrail. Five meters away Vader stood, his hands crossed in front of him, lightsaber hanging on his belt.
Shryne tried to keep him in focus.
Another board, whirling end-over-end, came out of nowhere, hitting him in the kidneys.
Reflexively the hand that was grasping the railing went to the small of his back, and he lost balance. Trying but failing to catch himself, he fell through space.
Give in the wooden floor saved his life, but at the expense of all the bones in his left arm and shoulder.
Above him Vader jumped from the bridge, dropping to the floor with a grace he hadn’t displayed before and alighting just meters away.
Ignoring the pain in his shattered limb, Shryne began to propel himself in a backward crawl toward the opening through which he and Vader had entered the wroshyr’s trunk, a hot wind howling at him, whipping his long hair about.
The balcony was gone. Fallen.
There was nothing between Shryne and the ground but gritty air filled with burning leaves. Far below, Wookiees were being herded onto the landing platform. The forests were in flames …
Vader approached, drawing and igniting his Sith blade.
Shryne blinked blood from his eyes; lifted his lightsaber hand only to realize that he had lost the sword during his fall. Slumping back, he loosed a ragged, resigned exhalation.
“I owe you a debt,” he told Vader. “It took you to bring me back to the Force.”
“And you to firm my faith in the power of the dark side, Master Shryne.”
Shryne swallowed hard. “Then tell me. Were you trained by Dooku? By Sidious?”
Vader came to a halt. “Not by Dooku. Not yet by Sidious.”
“Not yet,” Shryne said, as if to himself. “Then you’re his apprentice?” His eyes darted right and left, searching for some means of escape. “Is Sidious also in league with Emperor Palpatine?”
Vader fell silent for a moment, making up his mind about something. “Lord Sidious is the Emperor.”
Shryne gaped at Vader, trying to make sense of what he had said. “The order to kill the Jedi—”
“Order Sixty-Six,” Vader said.
“Sidious issued it.” Pieces to the puzzle Shryne had been grappling with for weeks assembled themselves. “The military buildup, the war itself … It was all part of a plan to eliminate the Jedi order.”
Vader nodded. “All about this.” He gestured to Shryne. “About you and me, you could say.”
Shryne’s stomach convulsed, and he coughed blood. The fall hadn’t only broken his bones, but ruptured a vital organ. He was dying. Backing farther out the opening, he gazed into the night sky, then at Vader.
“Did Sidious turn you into the monstrosity you’ve become?”
“No, Shryne,” Vader said in a flat voice. “I did this to myself—with some help from Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
Shryne stared. “You knew Obi-Wan?”
Vader regarded him. “Haven’t you guessed by now? I was a Jedi for a time.”
Shryne let his bafflement show. “You’re one of the Lost Twenty. Like Dooku.”
“I am the twenty-first, Master Shryne. Surely you’ve heard of Anakin Skywalker. The Chosen One.”
The Commerce Guild ship Starstone and the others had chosen to infiltrate grew larger in the transport’s cockpit viewports. Just over a thousand meters in length and bristling with electromagnetic sensor antennas and point-defense laser cannons, the Recusant-class support destroyer had taken a turbolaser bruising during the Battle of Kashyyyk, but its principal cannons and trio of aft thrust nozzles appeared to be undamaged.
Elsewhere local space was dotted with Imperial landers and troop transports, along with hundreds of freighters that had fled the surface of the tormented planet. Central to the latter craft, and a good distance from the support destroyer, floated the Interdictor cruiser that was preventing the traders’ ships from jumping to hyperspace.
Those trapped ships are the reason I was spared, Starstone thought.
The reason she had been rescued by Shryne …
“Any response from the droid brain?” she asked over Filli’s shoulder.
“Well, we’re chatting,” the slicer said from the cockpit’s comm suite. “It recognized the code we used to activate the facility at Jaguada, but it refuses to accept any remote commands. My guess is that it was rudely shut down during the battle, and wants to run a systems check before bringing the destroyer fully online.”
“Be best if we can keep from announcing ourselves,” Cudgel said from the copilot’s chair. “You think you can keep the brain from lighting up the entire ship?”
Chewbacca woofed in agreement.
“Not initially,” Filli said. “The brain will probably restore universal power gradually as part of its diagnostic analysis. Once that’s over and done with, I can task it to kill all the running lights, except for those around the forward docking bay.”
A sudden growl from Chewbacca called Starstone’s attention to the forward viewports.
Fore-to-aft, the pod-like warship was coming to life.
Cudgel muttered a curse. “The Interdictor’s scanners are bound to pick that up.”
“Just a couple of moments more,” Filli said.
Everyone waited.
“Done!” Filli announced.
In reverse order the destroyer’s running lights began to blink out, save for an array of illuminators that defined the rectangular entrance to the docking bay.
Filli flashed Starstone a grin. “The brain’s being very cooperative. We’re good to dock.”
Chewbacca brayed an interrogative.
“Any atmosphere?” Cudgel translated.
Filli did rapid input at the keyboard.
“The ship originally carried several squadrons of vulture and droid tri-fighters,” he said. “But unless the Gossams converted it fully to droid operation I’d expect there be atmosphere and artificial gravity in some areas …” His eyes darted to the display screen. “Looks like a bit of both: Gossam and droid crew.”
“Battle droids?” Starstone said.
Filli nodded. “ ’Fraid so.”
“You can’t shut them down?”
“Not without shutting down the command bridge.”
Starstone frowned and turned to Cudgel. “Gather up as many blasters as we’ve got aboard. And while you’re at it, you’ll find some rebreathers in the main cabin—just in case there’s no atmosphere.”
“You want a blaster,” he asked as he stood up, “or are you sticking with a lightsaber?”
“This is an occasion that calls for both,” she said.
“Archyr, Skeck, are you copying all this?” Filli said toward the audio pickup.
“Affirmative,” Archyr responded from the drop ship. “But we’ll precede you into the docking bay. We’re better armed and better shielded. After that there’s nothing to do but fight our way to the command bridge.”
Filli displayed a schematic of the destroyer on one of the suite’s monitor screens. “Most of the habitable areas are amidships, but the command bridge is in the outrigger superstructure above the bow.”
“Lucky break for us,” Archyr said. “It’s closer
to the bay.”
Starstone was studying the destroyer when the drop ship came alongside the transport. Without having to be told, Chewbacca decelerated and fell in behind the smaller craft.
Starstone slipped into the vacant copilot’s chair to watch the drop ship glide into the bay. Almost immediately blaster bolts crisscrossed the darkness. By the time the transport nosed through the opening, battle droids were dropping like targets in a shooting gallery, and the deck was strewn with spindly body parts.
Rebreathers strapped to their faces, lumas to their foreheads, Starstone, Cudgel, and Filli were standing at the boarding ramp hatch when Chewbacca set the transport down. Shortly the Wookiee joined them there, the bowcaster he carried over his shoulder assembled and gripped in his hands.
As the transport’s outer hatch slid open, the harsh sibilance of blasterfire infiltrated the ship. Starstone and the others hurried out into the thick of the fighting, their headlamps casting long shadows all over the bay. Archyr and several well-armed Wookiees were off to one side, clearing a path through battle droids toward a hatch in the bay’s forward bulkhead.
Firing on the run and hurtling pieces of disintegrated droids, Starstone, Filli, Cudgel, and Chewbacca made a desperate dash for the hatch. The corridor beyond was crowded with battle droids marching in to reinforce those in the docking bay.
Explosive quarrels from Chewbacca’s bowcaster combined with blasterfire and deflections from Starstone’s lightsaber dropped a dozen droids at a time. But for every dozen destroyed, another dozen appeared. Archyr and some of the Wookiees brought up the rear, ultimately allowing Starstone’s contingent to shoot their way into a turbolift that accessed the destroyer’s outrigger arm.
Prepared for the worst, the four of them burst onto the command bridge, only to find a group of befuddled humaniform technical droids, outfitted with power studs at the backs of the heads that allowed them to be quickly and methodically shut down.