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. Chewbacca 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?”