Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [374]
Off to his left, the six Jedi who had been fighting alongside him for the better part of a local hour were suddenly racing back toward Kachirho’s central wroshyr. Lifting his eyes, Chewbacca saw no significant threat, save for a Theta-class shuttle that was taking heavy fire as it attempted to fold its wings and settle on one of the tree-city balconies.
Higher up, the sky was crisscrossed by laserfire and contrails, and still filling with gunships, eerily reminiscent of what had happened only weeks earlier, when the Separatists had launched their invasion. Wookiee fluttercraft and an assortment of traders’ vessels were engaging the Imperial ships, but the outcome was clear.
The sheer number of descending gunships gave evidence of a sizable flotilla of capital ships in orbit. For all the Wookiees’ success in repelling the first wave, it was surely only a matter of time before the Star Destroyers would open fire. And then only a matter of time until Kashyyyk fell.
Anyone who thought that the Jedi were responsible for having brought the Empire down on Kashyyyk had no understanding of the nature of power. From the moment the troopers of Commander Gree’s brigade had turned on Yoda, Unduli, and Vos, Chewbacca, Tarfful, and the elders of Kachirho had grasped the truth: that despite all the rhetoric about taxation, free trade, and decentralization, there was no real difference between the Confederacy and the Republic. The war was nothing more than a struggle between two evils, with the Jedi caught in the middle, all because of their misplaced loyalty to a government they should have abandoned, and to a pledge that had superseded their oath to serve the Force above all.
If there was any difference between the Separatists and the newly born Imperialists, it was that the latter needed to legitimize their invasion and occupation, lest other threatened species rebel while they stood a fighting chance.
But a planet could fall without its species being defeated; a planet could be occupied without its species being imprisoned.
That was what separated Kashyyyk from the rest.
Back- and hip-packs bulging with survival food and rations, Wookiees were streaming down the city staircases, racing across the footbridges, and disappearing into the thick vegetation that surrounded the lake. Blazed as a defense against sneak attacks by Trandoshan slavers, hundreds of well-maintained evacuation routes cached with arms and supplies radiated from Kachirho and wove through the isolated rock outcroppings to the high forest beyond.
More to the point, Wookiees even as young as twelve, fresh from their coming-of-age hrrtayyk ceremonies, knew how to construct shelters from saplings, how to fashion implements from the stalks of giant leaves, and how to make rope. They knew which plants and insects were edible; the location of freshwater springs; the areas where dangerous reptiles or predatory felines lurked.
Despite all the elements of high technology they had incorporated into their lives, Wookiees never considered themselves separate from Kashyyyk’s grand forest, which on its own could provide them everything they needed to survive, for as long as necessary.
Targeted by unexpected anti-aircraft fire, Vader’s shuttle jinked for the largest of the Kachirho’s arboreal balconies, its powerful defensive shields raised and its quad lasers spewing unrelenting fire at a pair of hailfire droids the Wookiees had hoisted into their massive tree-fortress. Bolts from the shuttle’s forward weapons reduced the missile platforms to slagged heaps and chewed into the balcony’s wooden columns and beams, filling the air with splinters hard as nails. The explosions flung the bodies of Kachirho’s furry defenders far and wide. Hurled clear off the tier, some plummeted to the ground a hundred meters below.
In the cabin space of the shaken shuttle, Vader was being addressed by the holoimage of one of the task force commanders.
“Our circumspect