Darkest Knight

16

Deep inside his hairy chest, Lowbacca felt his heart contract with primal fear. He had known since childhood the dangers of descending into the perilous, untamed forests of Kashyyyk. The darkened depths often proved deadly even to those who entered fully armed and trained.

Nobody went to the underlevels willingly … but now, with Zekk and Vonnda Ra and the stormtroopers pursuing them, Lowie knew the primeval forest was their only chance.

The last time he had ventured beneath the secure treetop cities had been to search out glossy fibers from the syren plant, from which he wove his prized belt. He had thought himself so brave to accomplish the task alone.

Sirra’s friend Raaba had also gone by herself—because Lowie had. Despite her skills and courage, though, the dark-furred Wookiee female had never returned. But Lowie was not alone this time. He and his friends could fight together against whatever dangers the forest held.

Above and behind him, he heard the crashing of boots and the snapping of twigs as armored Imperials followed them, shining brilliant glowbeams into the dank, forever-night levels, startling exotic creatures that had never seen the light of day. A few random shots rang out as stormtroopers blasted forest animals. Burned leaves smoldered, then went out in a gasp of thick smoke.

Lowie and Sirra did their best to lead Jacen and Tenel Ka, using their darkness-adapted Wookiee vision to find broad, sturdy branches along the trunks of the wroshyr trees. Panting with the desperate effort, Lowie wheezed encouragement. The friends pressed on blindly, with no specific destination, knowing only that they had to keep going if they were to lose their pursuers in the maze of the forest underworld.

Em Teedee’s round, yellow optical sensors shed a bright glow into the murk, the most illumination they could risk. “Do be careful of those branches, Master Lowbacca,” the droid said as a twig scratched his outer casing. “I wouldn’t want to break loose and fall. That happened to me once already, if you’ll recall, and it was a frightfully unpleasant experience.”

Lowie groaned, remembering the misadventure on Yavin 4. Losing the translating droid had caused other problems as well, since no one at the Jedi academy had understood Lowie’s warnings that Jacen and Jaina had been captured by the TIE pilot Qorl.

Behind them, lightning shot through the darkness and branches crackled as the stormtroopers opened fire again. Lowie instinctively ducked, and Sirra dropped to a lower branch without bothering to test it for sturdiness. Streaks blazed across the thickets, erupting in fire and choking smoke.

“Hey, look out!” Jacen cried.

Tenel Ka grabbed on to a branch with her hand and swung down to Sirra’s level. “This way!” she said. “It is safe.”

Lowie leaped after her, one arm around Jacen’s waist, then sprinted across the moss-covered boughs. Farther from the warm sunlight, each forest level had a different ecosystem made up of matted platforms of interlaced vines, branches that grew together, accumulations of mulch in which other plants—fungi, lichens, squirming flowers—flourished. Thousands of insects, reptiles, birds, and rodents fled at the sound of the intruders.

Lowie chuffed for the others to follow him. Racing along on his flat feet, he wrinkled his black nose and sniffed the odor-congested air. His nostrils tingled with a tantalizing, terrifying scent—a scent he had smelled before. Something that had nearly cost him his life.

In the lambent glow from Em Teedee’s optical sensors, Lowie saw the wide-open maw of a syren plant, its glossy-yellow petals atop the blood-red stalk looked like a gaping mouth waiting for a meal. The plant had somehow taken root in a crook between two intergrown branches, and fed upon denizens of this forest level. The sparkling fibers that formed a plume at the carnivorous flower’s center shone temptingly bright, while a delicious scent lured unsuspecting victims.

Beside him, Sirra also sniffed the air and spotted the deadly plant. She growled in anticipation, her patchwork-shaved fur standing on end. But Lowie put a hand on her arm, shook his head, then gripped her arm firmly. He could tell his sister wanted to secure the precious syren fibers and prove her bravery as soon as possible.

Sirra groaned in disappointment, but she clearly understood their priorities. Behind them, several levels up, the pursuing stormtroopers fired again, this time at some large creature crashing through the tree levels.

Far too dangerous. The Imperials were too close.

With a growl Sirra took the lead, and Lowie guided his friends behind her.

As she raced through the morass of branches, ducking her head to keep her red-gold braids from snagging on thorns or low-hanging limbs, Tenel Ka reveled in the calisthenics that pushed her body to its limits. But she would have preferred to do it without the threat of sudden death from the blaster of a stormtrooper.

Her reptilian armor covered only her torso, leaving her limbs unprotected from scratches and insect bites—but she did not allow such minor inconveniences to bother her.

As the companions ran deeper into the forest, Tenel Ka took care to maintain her balance and watched out for her friend Jacen. Though he was highly skilled in sensing strange life-forms, Jacen was not as physically capable as she was. This was the chase. The hunt. Here she was in her element.

But at the moment Tenel Ka was not the stalker, but the prey.

Her reflexes were sharpened by her inability to see through the forest shadows. Her lightsaber could have lit the way, but she didn’t dare ignite it for fear of drawing attention to their position. At the moment her focus had to be on simply running.

All around, she detected looming dangers that grew worse, more foreboding, as they leapt from one level to the next, descending into thicker and thicker primeval wilderness. Tenel Ka sensed that the two Wookiees felt the increasing threat; Lowie and Sirra moved more cautiously, supporting each other as they used their night vision to choose a path.

At a broad, open intersection of wide branches, the Wookiees paused, panting for breath. Jacen slumped beside Tenel Ka, utterly exhausted. They knew they couldn’t stop for long.

During the brief rest, Tenel Ka remained standing. She turned in a slow circle, granite-gray eyes narrowed, sharply attentive for movement, for predators lurking in the surrounding trees. Her Jedi senses detected no dangerous animals, only a tingling underlying threat that grew more and more powerful.

Just then, a leathery plant tentacle wrapped quickly around Tenel Ka’s waist and drew itself snug. Thin thorns dug into her flesh through her reptilian armor. She cried out—and suddenly the air around them came alive with whipping, writhing vines from above.

Both Wookiees howled and thrashed. Jacen yelped. The thorny vines yanked him into the air, legs kicking, hands flailing. In an instant Tenel Ka snatched out her lightsaber and—ignoring the threat of revealing their position to the stormtroopers—ignited the glowing turquoise blade. Her arm swept sideways, severing the vines that grasped her waist.

Jacen yelled again and managed to get his lightsaber out, too. Swinging it above his head, he slashed through the vicious plant stems with a sizzling, wet sound. The spicy smell of burned sap cascaded into the air.

Lowbacca roared and ignited his Jedi weapon, striking left and right with the molten bronze blade. Hungry tentacles snaked toward him, eager to pull the Wookiee upward to where the knotted cluster of vines came together in a cavernous opening that emitted a sound like rocks grinding together, a slavering gullet ready to smash them into digestible pieces.

Two of the vines caught Sirrakuk and wrapped themselves tightly around her arms. She bared her Wookiee fangs and, bunching her powerful muscles, ripped the vines free of the central stem with brute force. The plant seemed not to notice; it went on thrashing its tentacles, and its open gullet continued to mash and grind.

Within moments, three flashing light-sabers sliced away the clinging tentacles and left only twitching stumps at the end of the voracious vine creature.

“We’ve escaped!” Em Teedee said. “Oh, how wonderful!”

“This is a fact,” Tenel Ka agreed. She examined the red welts and oozing scratches she had received during the battle, then looked up toward the next level of branches. “But our lightsabers have attracted the enemy.”

The others turned to follow her gaze. On the branches above them, completely surrounding the group, stood a contingent of fully armed stormtroopers, their blasters pointed down at the young Jedi Knights.

Jacen shut off the emerald beam of his lightsaber and squatted on the branch, breathing hard as he surveyed the encircling stormtroopers. In other circumstances, he would have found the underworld of Kashyyyk fascinating, filled as it was with insects and trees, ferns, vines, flowers, lizards—a million new pets for him to inspect, then set free. He found many of the life-forms to be incomprehensible, unlike anything he had ever experienced. Even now, with stormtroopers like pale statues above, blasters at the ready and aimed at him, Jacen could sense the hidden creatures around them.

Near one of the stormtroopers who stood on a decaying branch, Jacen noticed that a broad patch of bark lay wet and damp, like a mottled tongue wrapped around the tree. It was slick, glistening, moving on a cellular level.

Two more dark figures joined the gathered stormtroopers. The ominous Nightsister Vonnda Ra, with her hard muscles, broad shoulders, and glittering black body armor, stood next to Zekk, his dark hair neatly tied back with a thong at the nape of his neck, his swirling scarlet-lined cape undamaged by leaves or twigs. The stormtroopers shone glowrods down on the scene.

“You are trapped, Jedi brats,” Vonnda Ra said. “It could be amusing to watch you grovel for your lives—but I can assure you it would do you no good.”

“We do not intend to grovel,” Tenel Ka said, and the Nightsister glared at the young warrior girl from Dathomir.

Jacen focused his concentration on the wide, mysterious slick patch wrapped around the branch. It seemed like a river of damp leather, and as he concentrated, he felt a dim awareness, a rudimentary brain that was more a cluster of reflexes. But reflexes were all Jacen needed right now.

“I’m sorry it has come to this,” Zekk said, “but I owe my allegiance to the Second Imperium now, and you are my sworn enemies. I can no longer deny it. That was my choice.” Despite his words, the expression on Zekk’s high-cheekboned face and the disturbed look in his green eyes showed Jacen how troubled he truly was.

One of the stormtroopers moved sideways to get a clearer shot at them.

Jacen watched. Just a little more, just a little more …

Perhaps he sent out the thought with the Force, because the stormtrooper did indeed take one more step. His heavy, booted foot planted itself squarely on the wide wet patch.

Without warning, the creature reacted.

A slithering flap of wet, slimy meat in the form of a monstrous sluglike beast raised itself from its sleeping position. The motion knocked the stormtrooper completely off the branch, and he tumbled screaming into the depths of the forest.

With a thick slurping sound the enormous slug creature reared up and up and up, thrashing from side to side, knocking two other stormtroopers from their positions. The Imperial soldiers were thrown into pandemonium, shouting and shooting.

Jacen did his best to send a thought to the thing, identifying the white-armored guards as the enemy and planting the idea that Jacen, the two Wookiees, and Tenel Ka were the slow-witted creature’s friends.

Stormtroopers opened fire on the monster, but the blasters did little more than annoy it. Branches crashed and snapped. Energy bolts ricocheted around in the forest as the slug creature continued its reflexive attack.

Jacen stood transfixed, fascinated with the battle and the havoc the beast had already caused. Zekk and Vonnda Ra shouted conflicting orders.

The next thing Jacen knew, Tenel Ka slammed him aside. A blaster bolt sizzled past him as she wrapped a vine around her arm, grasped his waist, and dove to a lower branch. The two Wookiees were already ahead of them in their headlong flight.

Making quick use of the diversion, the young Jedi Knights continued down, down—dropping all the way to the bottom levels of the forest.