His heart pounded painfully and his eyes stung from the chemical smoke that leaked into the cockpit. He noticed a sour, noxious smell, and his head began to swim.
“Master Lowbacca,” Em Teedee said, “my sensors indicate that significant quantities of fumes have entered the cockpit.”
Lowbacca gave a growl of annoyance. Did the little droid think that his sharp sense of smell hadn’t picked that up?
“Well, no,” Em Teedee rushed on, “it may not be dangerous yet, but if we begin to lose airspeed, less smoke will be drawn away. The airborne toxins could reach potentially lethal levels”—the droid raised his volume slightly for emphasis—”even for a Wookiee.”
The speeder gave a shuddering jolt, scraping against branches again. With grim determination Lowbacca pulled up. The T-23 was even harder to manage now. He wasn’t sure how long he could last.
But he had to make it. He couldn’t leave his friends in danger.
The T-23 shuddered and dipped. Lowbacca wheezed, laboring to pull air into his lungs. As if in response to his effort, the starboard engine coughed and sputtered.
And died.
Using all of his piloting skills, Lowie fought to steady the craft in its wobbling descent. The thick, deceptively soft-looking canopy rushed up at him, and the T-23 came to a crunching halt in a blizzard of leaves and twigs. Like a wounded avian, it lay nestled on the treetops, its right lower wing buried in the foliage. The left engine still chugged, but smoke billowed up from the damaged engine below, pouring into the cockpit now.
Lowbacca’s head reeled with the impact, but he knew he had to get out. He fumbled with his crash restraints, trying to unfasten them. His vision was blurred from the acrid smoke, and he gagged at the stench. Confusion made his fingers clumsy.
Finally, with a burst of determination, he yanked on the straps until, loosened by the crash, they tore away. Two of the restraints came free in his hands, and he wriggled out of the remaining webbing.
Still no flames, Lowbacca noted with relief as he scrambled from the cockpit and distanced himself from the smoking T-23. Lowbacca gasped in deep lungfuls of the fresh, humid air of Yavin 4. As he worked his way across the treetops in the gathering dusk, one knee ached from where it had banged against the controls during the crash.
But he had no time to think about that. His first rescue attempt might have failed, but he had not failed yet. There were always options. He had to get back to the academy.
In his hurried scramble through the upper branches, Lowbacca did not notice when Em Teedee’s clip broke at his waist.
The tiny droid fell with a thin wail into the forest below.
Dusk deepened into the full darkness of the jungle night. Swarms of nocturnal creatures awakened, beginning to hunt—but still Lowbacca pressed on.
Common sense had forced him to travel below the canopy, descending to a level where all of the branches were of a sufficient length and sturdiness to support him as he transferred his agile bulk from one tree to the next. Sometimes when he began to tire, or when his injured knee threatened to give way beneath him, Lowbacca relied on his powerful arms instead, swinging from branch to branch, using his keen Wookiee night vision in the murky shadows.
But he never stopped to rest. He could rest later.
Right now all of his senses were as finely tuned as a medical droid’s laser beam. The pads of his feet and his acute sense of smell helped him to avoid decaying patches or slippery growths on the tree branches as he walked. His sharp hearing could distinguish between the sounds of wind through the leaves and the rustling of nocturnal animals as they stalked the jungle heights. For the most part, he managed to stay clear of them.
Lowbacca did not fear the darkness or the jungle. The jungles of Kashyyyk held far greater dangers—and he had faced those and survived. He remembered playing late-night games in the forest with his cousins and friends: races through the upper trees, jumping and swinging competitions, daring expeditions to the dangerous lower regions to test each other’s courage, and the usual rites of passage that marked a Wookiee youth’s transition into adulthood.
As he pushed through a dense clump of growth, a twig snagged Lowie’s webbed belt, and he yanked it free. The feel of the intricately braided strands beneath his fingers reminded him of the night when he had won his belt, of his dangerous rite of passage.
He remembered…
He felt his heart race with excitement as he descended toward the jungle floor that night long ago. Lowie had been down that far only twice before, when he had attended the rites of other friends, as was customary; there was strength in numbers when they sought to harvest the long, silky strands from the center of the deadly syren plant.
But Lowbacca had chosen to go alone, preferring to meet the challenge of the voracious syren plant using his own wits rather than borrowed muscles.
The night on Kashyyyk had been cool and dank. The profusion of screeches, chirps, growls, and croaks had been overwhelming. When he’d reached the lowest branches, Lowie had cinched the strap of his knapsack tighter and began his hunt.
With every sense fully alert, Lowbacca had moved stealthily from branch to branch until he caught the alluring scent of a wild syren plant. With sure instinct he’d followed the distinctive odor, feeling a mixture of anticipation and dread, until he squatted on the branch directly above the plant. He leaned over to study his stationary, but incredibly vicious, quarry.
The huge syren blossom consisted of two glossy oval petals of bright yellow, seamed in the center and supported by a mottled, bloody red stalk, twice as thick around as the sturdy tree limb on which Lowbacca sat. From the center of the open blossom spread a tuft of long white glossy fibers that emitted a broad spectrum of pheromones, scents to attract any unwary creature.
The beauty of the gigantic flower was intentionally deceptive, for any creature lured close enough to touch the sensitive inner flesh of the blossom would trigger the plant’s lethal reflexes, and the petal jaws would close over the victim and begin its digestive cycle.
Alone, Lowbacca intended to harvest the glittering strands of the plant from the center of the flower—without springing the trap.
Traditionally, a few strong friends would hold the flower open while the young Wookiee scrambled to the treacherous center of the blossom, harvested the lustrous strands of sweetly scented fiber, and quickly made an escape. But even this assistance was no guarantee. Occasionally young Wookiees still lost limbs as the carnivorous plant clamped down on a slow-moving arm or leg.
Performing the task by himself, though, Lowie had needed to be extra careful. He had removed the knapsack from his hairy back and extracted its contents: a face mask, a sturdy rope, a thin cord, and a collapsible vibroblade. He’d placed the mask over his nose and mouth to filter out the syren’s seductive scents. He knew that the pheromones could produce an almost overpowering desire to linger or to touch—and he could afford no mistakes.
Working quickly, enveloped by sinister night sounds, he had fashioned a short length of thin cord into a loose slipknot, then formed a loop to make a sort of seat for himself in the sturdy, longer rope. Passing the free end of the long rope over a branch directly above the syren plant, he’d gathered up the slack in one hand, slid off the limb, and lowered himself with muscular arms.
Lowie had positioned himself as close as he dared to the gently undulating petals of the hungry syren blossom, an arm’s length from the tantalizing tuft. He’d gripped the end of the long rope in his strong jaws to hold himself in place and free his hands. Then, using the loop of thin cord to lasso the tuft of precious fibers, he’d pulled himself close enough to slice them loose with his vibroblade. With a triumphant growl he’d jerked his prize toward himself, trapped the bundle against his body with one hairy arm, and stuffed the fiber into his knapsack.