The scene inside the factory was utter chaos. Frantic Wookiees rushed about bellowing orders, extinguishing small fires, righting toppled machinery, and helping injured or trapped friends. The smell of charred wood and singed fur stabbed at Jaina’s nostrils. Pale chemical smoke stung her eyes, but most of the fires were already contained, and a fresh breeze blew in through the open windows to clear the fumes.
Chewbacca roared in recognition as he rushed to his sister Kallabow—Lowie and Sirra’s mother. She was bent over another injured worker, tending his wounds. With nimble hands Kallabow had shaved the fur from around a bleeding cut and covered it with a coagulant bandage.
Lowie’s mother looked up, blinking dazed eyes set within whorls of auburn fur, and she and Chewbacca engaged in a rapid, barking interchange. Jaina caught only parts of the conversation, but learned enough to know that the devastating raid was indeed over. The Imperials had struck with lightning speed, causing enormous damage to the outlying facilities—but their main objective had apparently been to raid the equipment stockpiles and steal computer components and encryption devices.
Jaina was reminded of Qorl’s previous raid on the New Republic supply cruiser Adamant, when he had commandeered an entire shipment of hyperdrive cores and turbolaser batteries. The Second Imperium was definitely making plans for an all-out war—and soon.
Jaina bent down next to Kallabow. “Have you seen Lowie and Sirra? My brother Jacen, or maybe Tenel Ka?”
Lowie’s mother rattled off a series of woofs, growls, and barks in a worried tone. She spread her arms to indicate the surrounding pandemonium, then gripped Jaina’s shoulder, asking her to track down her children. Another Wookiee wailed in pain farther down the corridor; still dazed, Kallabow blinked wearily and moved past Jaina to help the victim to his feet.
“We’ve got to find them,” Jaina said, and Chewbacca nodded vigorously.
Chewie made his way deeper into the damaged facility, assisting wherever he could and barking out phrases that were incomprehensible to Jaina. Never one to stand around wringing her hands in an emergency, Jaina helped to bind up minor wounds and put out small fires. Occasionally, she used the Force to help muscular Wookiees heave aside smashed equipment. Every time she asked about her brother and her friends, however, she received only confused answers.
Moment by moment, the cacophony around Jaina increased with a confusing mix of Wookiee yowls, barks, and growls. Oh, how she wished that Em Teedee were here to interpret all the nuances. Her head spun with confusion and disorientation, and she was relieved to see Chewbacca motion her over to help him tend a wounded engineer. Chewie greeted her with animated gestures and an excited bark.
“What did you find?” Jaina asked, biting her lower lip.
The injured engineer spoke, her voice just above a wheezing purr. Still unable to understand, Jaina turned to Chewbacca for an interpretation. The irony of the situation might have struck her as funny had the circumstances not been so serious.
Chewie explained slowly enough that Jaina could follow. The engineer had seen the two young Wookiees and two human visitors run down the corridor behind her. Not long afterward, she had noted some of the Imperial attackers in the same corridor—stormtroopers and humans in dark capes.
“Any way out in that direction?” Jaina asked hopefully. “Is it possible they escaped?”
The engineer shook her head. No exits, only maintenance trapdoors that opened to the dense and dangerous forests below.
Trapdoors.
Chewie finished binding the engineer’s wounds, thanked her, and hurried off down the corridor she had indicated. Jaina skidded to a stop at the edge of a gaping hole blasted in the floor, where an access hatch had been ripped from its hinges. Chewbacca had to pull Jaina back physically to keep her from toppling over the brink. He growled, sniffing around the burned metal edges.
Jaina nodded. “Yeah, looks like the work of stormtroopers. They must’ve thought the trapdoors needed to be wider and did a little remodeling.” She blew out a long, slow breath, trying to calm herself. “Lowie told us how dangerous it is down there. But I guess it didn’t stop them.”
Chewie opened an emergency locker on the wall. He yanked out two knapsacks filled with supplies and tossed one to Jaina. Then, with a barely audible growl, he pointed down at the hole in the floor.
“You’re right, of course,” Jaina said. “What are we waiting for?” She peered down into the inky darkness below.
“Your jungle,” she said at last. “I guess you’d better lead.”
16
Deep inside his hairy chest, Lowbacca felt his heart contract with primal fear. He had known since childhood the dangers of descending into the perilous, untamed forests of Kashyyyk. The darkened depths often proved deadly even to those who entered fully armed and trained.
Nobody went to the underlevels willingly … but now, with Zekk and Vonnda Ra and the stormtroopers pursuing them, Lowie knew the primeval forest was their only chance.
The last time he had ventured beneath the secure treetop cities had been to search out glossy fibers from the syren plant, from which he wove his prized belt. He had thought himself so brave to accomplish the task alone.
Sirra’s friend Raaba had also gone by herself—because Lowie had. Despite her skills and courage, though, the dark-furred Wookiee female had never returned. But Lowie was not alone this time. He and his friends could fight together against whatever dangers the forest held.
Above and behind him, he heard the crashing of boots and the snapping of twigs as armored Imperials followed them, shining brilliant glowbeams into the dank, forever-night levels, startling exotic creatures that had never seen the light of day. A few random shots rang out as stormtroopers blasted forest animals. Burned leaves smoldered, then went out in a gasp of thick smoke.
Lowie and Sirra did their best to lead Jacen and Tenel Ka, using their darkness-adapted Wookiee vision to find broad, sturdy branches along the trunks of the wroshyr trees. Panting with the desperate effort, Lowie wheezed encouragement. The friends pressed on blindly, with no specific destination, knowing only that they had to keep going if they were to lose their pursuers in the maze of the forest underworld.
Em Teedee’s round, yellow optical sensors shed a bright glow into the murk, the most illumination they could risk. “Do be careful of those branches, Master Lowbacca,” the droid said as a twig scratched his outer casing. “I wouldn’t want to break loose and fall. That happened to me once already, if you’ll recall, and it was a frightfully unpleasant experience.”
Lowie groaned, remembering the misadventure on Yavin 4. Losing the translating droid had caused other problems as well, since no one at the Jedi academy had understood Lowie’s warnings that Jacen and Jaina had been captured by the TIE pilot Qorl.
Behind them, lightning shot through the darkness and branches crackled as the stormtroopers opened fire again. Lowie instinctively ducked, and Sirra dropped to a lower branch without bothering to test it for sturdiness. Streaks blazed across the thickets, erupting in fire and choking smoke.
“Hey, look out!” Jacen cried.
Tenel Ka grabbed on to a branch with her hand and swung down to Sirra’s level. “This way!” she said. “It is safe.”
Lowie leaped after her, one arm around Jacen’s waist, then sprinted across the moss-covered boughs. Farther from the warm sunlight, each forest level had a different ecosystem made up of matted platforms of interlaced vines, branches that grew together, accumulations of mulch in which other plants—fungi, lichens, squirming flowers—flourished. Thousands of insects, reptiles, birds, and rodents fled at the sound of the intruders.