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 Terrel 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.
The knew they couldn't y stop for long.
During the brief rest, Tenel Ka remained standing. She turned in a slow
circle, granitegray 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 wrappedquickly 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 andignoring 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 lightsabers 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, fems, vines,
flowers, lizardsa 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 slughke
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 cre
ature'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.
-----------------THE FOREST DARKNESS was so thick Jaina could
practically taste it. She followed the agile Chewbacca more by sound
than by any other sense, finding herself relying more and more on the
Force to guide her hands and feet. The air was cooler here below the
canopy.
Jaina shivered, though she doubted it was entirely because of the drop
in temperature.
With his sharp Wookiee vision, Chewie led the way without hesitation. He
barked an occasional warning about a patch of slippery moss or a weak
branch. Neither made any great attempt to keep quiet: their one concern
was to catch up with their friends before it was too late.
Gradually Jaina's eyesight adjusted enough that she could make out the
shadowy forms of tree trunks, black against deep gray. It wasn't much to
go by, but it helped. Chewbacca made a snuffling sound and gave a low
woof of triumph.
"They came this direction?" she asked.
He yipped an affirmative. Their smells were here. He detected four . . .
no, five of them, as well as a faint smell of metal. Jaina decided he
must be picking up on Em Teedee, Chewie growled low in his throat,
muttering about other smells too: plasteel, burned branches, the
thunderstorm-smell of ozone from blaster discharges.
Jaina's heart skipped a beat. 'Definitely sounds like the Nightsisters
brought stormtroopers down here with them."
Chewbacca increased his speed, following the fresh trail. Once Jaina
misjudged the spacing and almost fell between a pair of tree branches
that were farther apart than she'd thought. 'Chewie, I can barely see,"
she said.
With a chuff of understanding, the Wookiee stopped briefly, rummaged
through the emergency pack he had taken from the fabrication facility,
and pulled out a small mesh jar.
Jaina recognized a phosflea lure. He broke the seal.
Moments later, as if the glowing specks had materialized directly from
the air, the lure's surface was covered with tiny phosphorescent
insects. Chewbacca fastened the lure to a strap around Jaina's waist.
The "light" now shed a pinkish glow directly in front of her that
swirled like a comet's tail as she moved along.
Chewbacca pointed below Jaina to a freshly broken branch and the burned
scoring from weapon fire. The others had come this way.
'You're right," Jaina said. 'I can feel them, not too far ahead."
The Wookiee helped her across the broad gap and they resumed their
descent. Jaina climbed after him, watching handholds and footholds more
carefully now as the glowing phosfleas lit her way. A feeling of dread
mounted more strongly within her as they descended to each deeper level.
She could feel the weight of the overlying forest pressing down on them.
Unseen predators bounded across leafy limbs, pursuing their quarries;
the shriek of victims fallen in the endless hunt echoed through the
thick labyrinth of branches.
Smaller creatures chirped, buzzed, and chittered. None of them sounded
friendly to her.
Jaina knew that her ftiends were good fighters, but she knew, too, that
even Lowie the strongest of all of them, feared the jungles of Kashyyyk.
That alone was cause for worry, but the young Jedi Knights and Sirra had
more to fear than the deadly plants and animals that populated the
lowest levels of the forest.
Jaina could feel that something was about to happen. "No time to lose!"
she urged. She picked up her pace. Chewbacca, sensing her urgency, did
the same, barely taking time to rest his foot on one limb before
bounding down to a lower branch.
In the distance Jaina heard a shout, a human voice that sounded loud and
ebilling, mixed with the wild noises. When she stopped to look in that
direction, she saw flickers of light and heard the sizzle of blaster
Just then, the rotting branch beneath her feet creaked and threatened to
give way. In her haste, she had not bothered to check the branch before
stepping on it. Chewbacca spun and reached out to pull her to safety on
a thicker branch closer to the trunk. She scrambled for purchase.
But the whole side of the wroshyr tree must have been weakened by rot or
disease, for at that moment the bough on which the large Wookiee stood
gave way as well. Snapping and popping, the gnarled wood dropped out
from beneath him.
Jaina watched, her mouth open in a silent scream, as Chewbacca
plummeted, crashing into the darkness below. -----------------EXHAUSTED,
ZEKK STOOD with the lightsaber still gripped in his sweaty hand. He
found it hard to breathe the thick, cloying air of the underworld.
The smoking carcass of the dead slug beast, now sliced in pieces, lay
draped across the overspreading branches. Burned slime bubbled with a
noxious stench. Small fires crackled from stray blaster bolts that had
ignited portions of the dense foliage. The surviving stormtroopers
shouted to each other over helmet comlinks, completing their damage
assessment.
Vonnda Ra stood trembling, jaw set, face drawn, as if the fury she had
unleashed to fight the monster had drained her somehow.
The new Nightsisters were supposedly proof against the physically
damaging effects of the evil powers they invoked, but the tremendous
battle Vonnda Ra and Zekk and the stormtroopers had waged against the
mindless slug had left her.looking shriveled.
Zekk slumped against an upright tree trunk, feeling the soft squish of
blue moss mixed with ichor from the slug creature.
Only four stormtroopers remained with their party. The slug beast had
crushed the others or flung them into the unseen depths below. Chunks of
the dead thing sloughed off the main branches, oozing down to where
rodents and scavengers rustled through the darkness in a feeding frenzy.
Zekk heard a crash and a crackle of snapping twigs far behind them.
Suddenly, with a tingle through his own Force senses, he knew that two
others followed, attempting to catch them-and he identified one of the
pursuers.
In astonishment, he blinked his green eyes into the forest shadows,
reaching out with the focused power of his senses.
"It's Jaina Solo," he said to Vonnda Ra.
'Behind us. She's coming this way." He planted his black boots firmly on
the branch. He had t
o choose, but he could not. With all of Brakiss's
promises, he had never thought it would be so difficult.
Ahead Jacen, Lowbacca, Sirra, and Tenel Ka had succeeded in eluding
Imperial pursuit so far-but Jaina, completely unaware, was heading
straight toward them. He would have to confront her himself "We must
split up," Zekk said. "I will go back alone and stop Jaina. The rest of
you, continue after these others."
"Yes." Peering ahead into the forest maze, Vonnda Ra seethed. "I'll make
them pay for what they've done to us!"
With a gesture of her clawed hand, the Nightsister and the remaining
stormtroopers set off after the young Jedi Knights.
Though Jacen fought to stay within sight of his companions, this deep
level of the forest had become so dark he felt as if he were swimming
through a pool of ink. Finally, surprisingly, the depths began to
shimmer with wonder. He noticed the cold illumination of phosphorescent
organisms, glowing insects, pulsing fungi and lichens that threw
heatless chemical light into the smothering darkness.
All around him in the branches and leaves he could see spangles like
starlight, as ifinstead of being deep within a dense foresthe stood on a
sprawling plain under a clear night sky. Jacen found it breathtaking,
and nudged Tenel Ka's warm arm to get her attention. The immensity of it