Star Wars: A Forest Apart Read online

  [No, but it might explain what they have planned for tonight,] Malla said.

  Chewbacca furrowed his brow.

  [The welcoming ceremony,] Malla explained. [Imperials would certainly have reason to disrupt that.]

  [And that would explain why they took Princess Leia’s datapad,] he agreed.

  Chewbacca was growing more alarmed. The underdwellers had found a way to defeat the security system in the Solos’ apartment, so he could only assume that they would be able to slice the security even on Princess Leia’s military-grade datapad. Then they would be able to use the ’pad to access entry codes and schematics for the ceremonial chambers of the Provisional Council, and Chewbacca did not even want to contemplate the damage they could cause crawling around inside the service runs there. He activated his comlink and tried to open a channel to Han, but the signal light remained stubbornly dark.

  [We are on our own?] Malla asked.

  Chewbacca nodded. [Too much interference this deep.]

  [Then our son is in trouble,] Malla said. [I must have seen a hundred centers on that list.]

  [More than a hundred,] Chewbacca agreed. He banged on the display again, studied the list of locations as long as the screen would allow him, then nodded in satisfaction. [But this is all the help we need, I think.]

  [Really?] Malla’s tone was equal parts hope and doubt.

  Chewbacca raised a finger for patience, then unclipped his glow rod and twisted down in his seat to look at the serial number under the instrument panel.

  There was none.

  He smiled and switched off the glow rod. Those who were truly trying to hide their identity altered or defaced their vehicle serial numbers. Imperial Intelligence, on the other hand, liked to advertise the long reach of its sinister power. They used vehicles with no serial numbers because they wanted people who looked for such information to know with whom they were dealing.

  [Now I am sure. We are closer than we thought.] Chewbacca sat up again and found a crowd of pale underdweller faces looking through his window, their expressions more appraising than curious. [Very close.]

  He turned away from the underdwellers and, watching the dark building facades on Malla’s side of the lane, started back toward the fallen gallery.

  [Chewbacca, perhaps it would help if you told me what we are looking for.]

  [I don’t know, exactly.]

  [You said we were close,] Malla objected. [You said very close.]

  [We are,] Chewbacca said. [But I’ve never seen one before.]

  [One what?]

  [An entrance to a secret Imperial detention center.]

  [Oh,] Malla said, sounding a bit frightened. [Would it look something like a small docking bay entrance?]

  [It might.]

  Malla pointed down over her side of the airspeeder. [Then you should turn here.]

  Chewbacca swung their nose around and, about twenty meters below, saw a dim blue glow spilling from the mouth of a durasteel tunnel. Although there were no obvious weapons emplacements or guard posts, the unadorned starkness of the surrounding facade—and the utter lack of nearby portals or balconies—lent the entrance a silently intimidating air.

  [Yes,] Chewbacca said. [I am sure that is what a secret Imperial detention center looks like.]

  Chapter 4

  Chewbacca dropped their nose toward the square blue maw of the entrance tunnel and began a slow descent into the detention center. Malla took the blaster rifle from between the seats and began to inspect the underside.

  [It is a special-action model,] Chewbacca explained. [The safety disengages automatically when you grab the stock and place your finger on the trigger.]

  Malla experimented with her grip for a moment, then shook her head. [I do not trust myself with that.] She returned the weapon to the holster behind the driver’s seat, then stared through the windshield. [I am sure you have a plan.]

  Chewbacca nodded. [A good one.] He negotiated a sharp crash-corner designed to prevent high-speed penetration runs, then said, [Find Lumpy and take him back.]

  [When the pale ones realize it is us in their car, you don’t think they will try to kill him?]

  [That is why we must move quickly and strike hard.]

  Chewbacca negotiated the second part of the crash-corner, and they passed through an open security gate into a cavernous garage. Illuminated in the same dim light as the entrance tunnel, it was filled with derelict airspeeders, carboplas barrels, and jumbled heaps of salvage. Opposite the tunnel, he could barely make out a two-story command deck, its transparisteel observation wall caked in grime and pocked with blast holes.

  The other airspeeder had been backed into a parking bay beneath the command deck. Four underdwellers were behind the vehicle, struggling to haul a flailing ball of fur toward an open security door leading deeper into the detention center. As he and Malla drew closer, Chewbacca began to see lumps and bruises on the bloodied faces of his son’s captors.

  [Look at the fight he is giving them!] He swung the speeder around in front the adjacent bay. [I count two broken noses and a dislocated jaw!]

  Malla gave him a reproving scowl. [This is no slap match, Chewbacca.] She rose from her seat and turned toward the back of the airspeeder. [To fight that hard, Lumpy must be terrified.]

  [A little fear is healthy—it teaches you to be careful.] Chewbacca backed into the bay. [You know what to do?]

  She nodded. [Hit hard, hit fast, come back with Lumpy.]

  [And Princess Leia’s datapad, if you see it.] Chewbacca rose and slipped into the weapons turret. [I’ll cover you.]

  Malla raced out the speeder’s rear door, roaring threats and curses. By the time Chewbacca could lift the heavy blaster out of its mounting socket, she was already upon the underdwellers, hurling gaunt bodies aside and tearing bony hands off her son. Chewbacca fired a few bolts at the floor to chase the two survivors through the security door. Then Lumpy was free, scrambling to his feet—and starting after his captors.

  [This way!] Lumpy waved an arm toward the security door. [It’s a—]

  Malla caught the cub by the arm and jerked him back toward the airspeeder. Lumpy squirmed free. So much for fear teaching him anything.

  [Lumpy!] Chewbacca roared. [Come—]

  [It’s a trap!] Lumpy grabbed Malla by the wrist and tried—unsuccessfully—to pull her toward the security door. [Hurry!]

  Chewbacca turned to scan the rest of the garage and saw a pair of small panels sliding open in the far corners of the room. [Go!]

  He waved Malla ahead and dropped out of the turret just as the security door began sliding shut. He aimed out the back of the airspeeder and blasted the upper guides. The door slid off its track and jammed.

  Cannon bolts began to hit the speeder’s armor, shaking it and penetrating often enough to leave no doubt as to the fate of anyone who remained inside. Malla and Lumpy reached the security door and squeezed through the crack. Chewbacca raced after them, hitting the door with his shoulder and knocking it askew as he powered past.

  He slammed headlong into a maelstrom of ricocheting blaster bolts and flailing Wookiee arms and flying underdwellers, then glimpsed a wall of pale faces trying to enter through the doorway opposite and opened up with the heavy blaster.

  The wall vanished.

  Chewbacca slammed the butt of the weapon into the skulls of two underdweller humans who were bouncing blaster bolts off the walls as Lumpy struggled to keep their arms pointed at the floor, then turned to find Malla bending the last of her attackers over double—in the wrong direction.

  Leaving Malla to watch his back, Chewbacca stepped across half a dozen gaunt bodies and peered through the doorway into the bottom of a gloom-filled cell block of no more than a hundred units. Rushing across the central atrium was a small gang of underdwellers armed with old E-11 blaster rifles. Chewbacca raised his heavy blaster and shook his head; when they stopped and started to lift their own weapons, he cut them down.

  Only then did he notice that he and his f
amily seemed to be in a prisoner-processing area, with a guard station to the left and a wall of stun cuffs to the right. Out in the garage area, the blaster cannons were continuing to fire, their bolts ricocheting off the floor and occasionally even hammering the sagging security door itself.

  [Anybody hurt?] Chewbacca asked.

  [I’m . . . I’m okay,] Lumpy said. [I think.]

  [You’re covered in blood,] Malla said, reaching for him. [Let me have a look.]

  He started to consent, but caught Chewbacca looking at him and pulled away.

  [It’s not my blood.] Lumpy glanced in the direction of the hammering cannon bolts, then turned to Chewbacca. [It’s lucky I knew there was a trap, right? When—]

  [We have not escaped yet, Lumpy,] Chewbacca said, glancing around the little room. The door leading into the guard station was locked tight, leaving the cell block as the only available exit—which was why Chewbacca knew they had to avoid it at all costs. [You can explain later.]

  Lumpy’s face fell.

  Chewbacca ignored the pang of guilt he felt for cutting the cub off and, peering through the guard station’s grimy observation wall, located the control panel. Motioning Malla and Lumpy down into a corner, he pressed the muzzle of his heavy blaster against the transparisteel and leaned into it with all his strength.

  [Lumpy, don’t ever do this,] he said. [Unless you have to.]

  [But isn’t the blowback going to—]

  [Yes, it is.]

  Chewbacca closed his eyes and pulled the trigger, was blinded by the muzzle flash anyway, and slammed backward into the wall opposite. His next sensation was sliding across a badly listing deck, his ears ringing with blasterfire and his nostrils filled with the reek of scorched fur. He had one arm raised in the air and a knot between his shoulder blades that felt like someone had hit him with a stun baton.

  [Can you stand?] asked a soft Wookiee voice—Malla’s voice.

  Chewbacca opened his eyes and saw that he still had legs. Then he saw the small processing room where they were still trapped, and the last few moments came back to him in a rush. He snatched his dropped weapon off the floor, struggled to his feet, and saw the guard station. There was a fist-sized hole where he had pressed his blaster to the transparisteel, and the rest of the observation wall had been heat-fused into opacity.

  [Where’s Lumpy?]

  Malla gestured at the guard station door, which was now open. Chewbacca stepped through and found Lumpy waiting inside, keeping watch out the opposite side of the room.

  Once Malla had joined them, Chewbacca stepped over to the control panel, closed both the cell-block door and the entrance to the station itself, then blasted the control panel.

  He turned to Lumpy. [Now tell me about this trap.]

  Lumpy’s expression was delighted. [Really?]

  Chewbacca was torn between chastising the cub for not obeying and praising him for saving their lives—mostly because he did not know which avenue was more likely to keep Lumpy under control until they could find a way out of this mess.

  Chewbacca settled for nodding.

  [After they pulled me into their airspeeder,] Lumpy began, [It made a big point of telling me you would follow.]

  [It?] Malla asked.

  [Their droid,] Lumpy explained. [At least I think It is theirs—everyone acts like It owns them. The droid said It knows how Wookiees think, and It would be ready when you came after me. So when we got here and It told Its guys to keep me out in the parking bays until you saw me, I knew It was setting a trap.]

  [This droid . . .] Chewbacca took Lumpy’s place at the exit and found himself looking down an empty corridor, with only two doors on the garage side and a broken turbolift at the end. He knew the lift was broken because someone had pushed a scrap-metal ladder up the shaft. [What did It look like?]

  [Kind of spidery, with a shiny black body and lots of long legs,] Lumpy said.

  [Sounds like an IT—one of the interrogator series,] Chewbacca said, struggling to figure out why an outdated torture droid would take it into its programming to do something like this. [You did well. The ITs are very clever—which is why you must do exactly as I say from now on.]

  [Don’t worry,] Lumpy said.

  [We are worried,] Malla said. [If you had obeyed just once today, we wouldn’t be in this mess.]

  [And then we wouldn’t know where Princess Leia’s datapad—]

  [Lumpy!] Chewbacca glared down at the cub. [You are making me worry.]

  Without waiting for a reply, Chewbacca led the way down the corridor. Concerned as he was about what the IT droid might have planned for the banquet that evening, his first priority was escaping the detention center with his family. Getting killed trying to be heroes would save no one.

  Both doors in the corridor proved to be locked from the other side, so the only possible escape route was the turbolift. Chewbacca kept expecting a gang of underdwellers to enter the hall behind them—or drop out of the lift itself—and attack, but they reached the corridor’s end without incident.

  He motioned Malla and Lumpy to wait while he climbed the makeshift ladder to be sure the area was clear. He could no longer hear the blaster cannons rumbling out in the garage, but there were other sounds—muffled whirrings and muted shouts, and the unmistakable crack of a droid’s voice giving orders.

  At the top of the ladder, Chewbacca found himself on the command deck he had seen earlier, looking out across a murky jumble of desks, control panels, and blaster stations. When the facility was new, the observation walls to either side had afforded unimpeded views of both the cell block and garage. Now the transparisteel was so begrimed he could make out only nebulous shapes and ghostly stirrings.

  On a brightly lit desk near the center of the room, a small, vaguely bird-shaped droid was squatting over a datapad, humming and chirping and blinking to itself as its manipulator digits danced across the keypad. Unlike nearly everything else in the detention center, the droid’s body casing was polished and gleaming, its servo-systems obviously lubricated and well maintained.

  Chewbacca descended the ladder again and turned to Lumpy. [Was there another droid with the IT?] he whispered.

  Lumpy nodded. [A little slicer.] He answered just as quietly. [It was with the thieves inside the Solos’ apartment building.]

  Chewbacca nodded. He remembered glimpsing a similar droid near the overpressure pipes before Lumpy was taken, and a slicer would certainly explain how the Solos’ security system was disarmed. Probably, the slicer even explained why the maintenance droids had been covering the thieves’ tracks in the physical plant. The only thing its presence did not explain was who was supplying underdwellers with million-credit slicer droids.

  [The slicer is up there working on a datapad—]

  [What are we waiting for?] Lumpy demanded. The cub jumped on the makeshift ladder and started to scramble up. [Let’s go!]

  This time, Chewbacca was ready. [Get down!] He plucked Lumpy out of the turbolift and planted him firmly on the floor. [You’re going to get someone killed!]

  Lumpy’s eyes grew round and liquid, and his lip began to tremble. Chewbacca instantly felt guilty, but being harsh seemed the only way to get through. He pointed a finger in the cub’s face.

  [You’re not ready,] he said firmly. [You stay with your mother. Understand?]

  Lumpy nodded, sullenly, staring at the floor.

  Chewbacca looked to Malla and rolled his eyes, then asked, [Will you be all right here?]

  [I’ll know where to find you,] Malla replied. [But hurry.]

  Chewbacca ruffled Lumpy’s fur, then climbed the ladder and began the slow, silent advance of a Wookiee on the stalk. Once he was close enough to be certain of hitting his target, he raised the blaster rifle and trained it on the desktop. When he had approached to within three paces, Chewbacca stopped and cleared his throat.

  The slicer droid continued to work. “Busy.”

  Chewbacca zinged a blaster bolt past its cognitive processor housing. The man
ipulator digits went motionless, then the thing hopped around to face him.

  “What is it?” it demanded. Noticing Chewbacca’s species, the droid switched to Shyriiwook. [I’m on a deadline here.]

  [You are not going to make it,] Chewbacca said. [Trip your circuit breaker, and you might survive to be reprogrammed.]

  The droid squatted on the datapad. [I’m programmed to self-destruct upon capture—but it doesn’t have to come to that. I can get you out of this place alive.]

  [That implies you will be leaving—and the only way that will happen is slung over my back.] Chewbacca eased forward and began to inspect its casing. [What model are you? ISB-one-twenty?]

  [One-twenty?] the droid scoffed. [Don’t insult me. My processor speed is fifty-point-three-two times faster than the one-twenty’s.]

  [Then you must have the GwendoLyn Six,] Chewbacca said.

  [That’s right,] the droid said proudly. [Tachyon processing bands, quantum RAM, biocell storage.]

  [Nice chip,] Chewbacca observed. It was also one that the maker, the Imperial droid supplier MerenData, had developed in the last two years. [You must have set Ysanne Isard back the price of an entire assault company.]

  [I wouldn’t know,] the droid replied—clearly oblivious, despite its processing power, to how much it had just revealed about itself. [Cost has never been one of my operational parameters.]

  Chewbacca smiled at the droid’s tacit admission. The former director of Imperial Intelligence, Ysanne Isard had—for a time—been the glue holding the Empire together in Palpatine’s absence. Fortunately for the New Republic, she had perished a year and a half earlier, when her shuttle exploded near the end of the Bacta War.

  As Chewbacca was puzzling out the details of the plot, he heard a gentle thump behind him—it was probably just a granite slug falling off a wall. The important thing was that he now understood the basics of Isard’s plan: send a slicer to update the programming of an IT droid still lurking in one of the Empire’s secret detention centers, then sit back and watch as it executed its new prime directive—to destroy the government of the fledgling New Republic.

  [I have heard that Ysanne Isard never worried about cost,] Chewbacca said, still holding his blaster on the slicer. [How—]