Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 02_ Shield of Lies - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [138]
In honoring a life debt to Han Solo, Chewbacca had left his son to be raised by mother and grandfather. He could not fault their love or their care, but something had been missing—something to spark the rrakktorr, the defiant fire, the eager strength that was a Wookiee’s heart. Lumpawarrump did not even have a friend like Salporin to test himself against in daily clinches and slap-fights.
The calendar said that it was time. Lumpawarrump had sprung up to adult height. But he had only begun to fill out that tall frame, and it was clear that he did not yet feel the power of his size. It was also not difficult to see that Lumpawarrump was in awe of his famous father, and paralyzingly anxious for his approval. Beyond that, Chewbacca was still trying to take his measure.
His son had talent in his hands. Though he had dragged out the task through nine days, Lumpawarrump had done a skillful job constructing his bowcaster—its weaknesses were the kind that only experience would teach him to correct. And he had shown a steady hand in downing a kroyies with it, the first of the hunting tests.
But the second test, trapping and killing a big-eyed scuttle grazer on level three, had taken even longer and not gone as well. And the test waiting ahead, inside the Well of the Dead, promised to ask more of Lumpy than he was ready to face.
[Explain to me what we see,] he said to his son.
[It is a wound in the forest, where something fell from the sky long ago. It is the bottom of the great pit of Anarrad, which we see from the high lookouts of Rwookrrorro.]
[Why did Kashyyyk not heal the wound?]
[I do not know, Father.]
[Because she needed a home for the katarn. The light falls to the depths and calls forth the young vitality of the wroshyr. The green leaves shelter the daubirds and sustain the sprites and mallakins. The daubirds invite the netcasters, and the mallakins call the grove harriers. And the katarn, the old prince of the forest, comes to the feast.]
[If Kashyyyk has given the katarn this place, why must we hunt them?]
[It is our pact with them, from long ago.]
[I do not understand.]
[Once they hunted us, and the richness of the high forest was theirs for a thousand generations. But their hunting did not destroy us. Nothing of this world is to be squandered, my son. The katarn gave the Wookiee its strength and courage, and allowed the Wookiee to find the rrakktorr. Now we hunt them to repay the gift. Someday it will be their turn again.]
* * *
The fleet carrier Venture loomed ahead of Plat Mallar like a rugged gray island in an endless, empty sea. Snub fighters of the interceptor screen orbited it like hunting birds on the wing.
“Looks awfully good to me,” said Ferry Four.
“It’s a mirage,” said Ferry Six. “They’re going to have our heads for losing the commodore.”
“Cut the chatter and clean up the formation,” said Lieutenant Bos, the ferry flight leader. “Venture flight operations, this is Bravo Flight leader. Requesting landing vectors on the ball. I have ten birds ready to roost.”
Under ordinary circumstances, the air boss would have handed the squadron over to the landing officer of the active landing bay, who in turn would have activated the landing alignment system’s four tracking lasers to guide the fighters in. But all of Venture’s landing bays appeared to be locked up tight. “Hold at two thousand meters and stand by, ferry leader.”
“What’s going on, Venture?”
“I have no further information for you at this time. Hold at two thousand meters and stand by.”
“Understood. Bravo Flight, it looks like they’re not quite ready for us. We’re going to parallel the carrier at two thousand meters, single file, landing spacing, until they wave us in.”
“Is it just me, or are there guns pointed at us?” Ferry Nine whispered over combat two, the addressable ship-to-ship frequency. “I’m looking right down the quads of an AS battery.”
Lifting his eyes from the controls, Plat Mallar studied the