They’re interested in knowing why you’re so interested in knowing whether any Jedi were here during the battle,” Cudgel explained to Starstone and the others while the quartet of armed Wookiees glared down at them.
“Idle curiosity,” Filli said, which only succeeded in eliciting rumbling growls from the four.
“They’re not buying it,” Cudgel said needlessly.
Starstone gazed up into the wide bronzium muzzles of weapons she suspected she would need the Force to heft, let alone fire. Peripherally she was aware that the confrontation had begun to draw the attention of other landing parties. Humans and aliens alike were suddenly interrupting their transactions with liaison staffers and Wookiees, and turning toward the transport.
Quickly she made up her mind to risk everything by simply telling the truth.
“We’re Jedi,” she said just loud enough to be heard.
From the way the Wookiees tilted their enormous shaggy heads, she grasped instantly that they had understood her. They kept their exotic weapons enabled and raised, but at the same time their expressions of wariness softened somewhat.
One of them brayed a remark to Cudgel.
Cudgel stroked his long beard. “Now, that’s even harder to swallow than the idle-curiosity explanation, don’t you think? I mean, considering the fact that the Jedi were wiped out.”
The same Wookiee lowed and gobbled, and, again, Cudgel nodded, then centered his gaze on Starstone.
“Maybe if you’d said that you were a Jedi, then all of us on the happy side of these blasters would be convinced. But—” He counted heads. “—you can’t be telling me all eight of you are Jedi. Seven anyway, ’cause I know Filli’s almost as far from being a Jedi as it gets.”
“I meant me,” Starstone said. “I’m a Jedi.”
“So it’s just you, then?”
“She’s lying,” Siadem Forte said before she could respond.
Two of the Wookiees snarled in plain displeasure.
Cudgel looked from Forte to Starstone. “Lying? See, now you have everyone really confused, ’cause we always thought of the Jedi as truth tellers.”
The Wookiees spoke among themselves, then one of them barked an outpouring at Cudgel.
“Guania, here, points out that you arrive in a military transport. You look as though you can handle yourselves. You start asking questions about Jedi … He’s thinking that you might be bounty hunters.”
Starstone shook her head back and forth. “Check the transport. Under the navicomputer console, you’ll find six lightsabers—”
“Means nothing,” Cudgel cut in. “You could have taken them off your quarries, just the way General Grievous did.”
“Then how do we prove it?” Starstone said. “What do you want us to do, perform Force tricks?”
The Wookiees issued a yodeling warning.
Cudgel lowered his voice to say: “In the unlikely event that you are Jedi, that might not be such a good idea out here in the open.”
Starstone forced an exhale, and looked up at the Wookiees. “We know that Masters Yoda, Luminara Unduli, and Quinlan Vos were here with brigades of troopers.” When she saw in their deep brown eyes that she had their full attention, she continued. “We’ve risked a lot to come here. But we know that Master Yoda had good relations with you, and we’re hoping that still counts for something.”
The Wookiees didn’t actually lower their weapons, but they did disable them. One of them lowed to Cudgel, who said: “Lachichuk suggests we continue this conversation in Kachirho.”
Starstone asked Filli and Deran to remain with the ship; then she, Forte, Kulka, and the others began to follow Cudgel and the Wookiees toward the gargantuan wroshyr that stood at the center of Kachirho tree-city. No sooner had they left the landing platform than Cudgel’s attitude changed.
“I heard that none of you survived,” he said to Starstone as they walked.
“It’s beginning to look like we’re the only ones,” she said sadly. Putting the edge of her hand to her brow, she gazed up at the huge balconies that tiered the tree, some of which showed evidence of recent damage.
“Do you know if any Jedi died here?”
Cudgel shook his head. “The Wookiees haven’t told me anything. For a while it looked like Kashyyyk was going to have its own garrison of clone troopers, but after the Sep droids and war machines shut down, the troopers decamped. Ever since, the Wookiees have been making good use of everything that was left behind.”
“For weapons?”
“You bet, for weapons. Seps or no, they’ve still got enemies—species that want to exploit them.”
Cudgel led everyone into the hollowed base of the tree, and finally to a turbolift that accessed Kachirho’s upper levels.
Similar to everything she had seen since leaving the landing platform, the turbolift was an ingenious blend of wood and alloy, the technology that drove it artfully concealed. And at each tier, her astonishment only increased. In addition to the exterior platforms that grew like burls from the bole, the tree contained vast interior rooms, with shimmering parquet floors and curved walls inset with wooden and alloy mosaics. There didn’t seem to be a straight line anywhere, and everywhere Starstone looked she saw Wookiees engaged in building, carving, sanding … as devoted to their work as Jedi had been in fashioning the Temple. Except the Wookiees hadn’t enslaved themselves to symmetry or order; rather, they allowed their creations to emerge naturally from the wood. In fact, they seemed to invite a certain kind of imperfection—some detail to which the eye would be drawn, setting off an entire wall panel, or an expanse of floor.
Covered walkways and bridges crisscrossed the tree’s interior shaft, and irregular openings brought verdant Kashyyyk inside. At every turn, every staircase spiral or turbolift stop, exterior views of the lake, the forest, and the sheer cliffs were framed by finely worked apertures and clefts. What Kachirho lacked in color, it made up for in luster and deep patina.
Fifty or so meters above the lake, the Jedi were ushered into a kind of central control room, which looked out over the glinting water and was perhaps the purest example yet of the Wookiees’ ability to combine organic and high-tech elements. Console display screens and holoprojectors showed views of the landing platform, as well as loading operations in orbit.
There, their escorts exchanged muted growls and snorts, snuffs and rumbles, with two others, one of whom was certainly the tallest Wookiee Starstone had seen.
“This is Chewbacca,” Cudgel said, introducing the shorter of the pair, “and this is one of Kachirho’s war chiefs, Tarfful.”
Starstone introduced herself and the rest of the Jedi, then lowered herself onto a beautifully carved stool built for human-size beings. Similar stools were rushed into the room, along with soft seat cushions and plates of food.
While all this was going on, Tarfful and Chewbacca were being briefed by Lachichuk. Bronzium bands gathered the chieftain’s long hair into rope-thick tassels that fell to his belted waist. The shoulder straps of his baldric joined at an ornate pectoral. Chewbacca, whose black fur was cinnamon-tipped and nowhere near as long as Tarfful’s, wore a simple baldric Starstone thought might double as an ammunition bandolier.
When everyone was seated and the Wookiees had finished conversing, Cudgel said: “Chieftain Tarfful understands and applauds the courage you’ve shown in coming to Kashyyyk, but it grieves him to report that he has nothing but sad tidings for you.”
“They’re … dead?” Starstone asked.
“Master Vos was presumed killed by fire from a tank,” Cudgel explained, “Master Unduli by blasterfire.”
“And Master Yoda?” she asked quietly.
Tarfful and Chewbacca fell into a long conversation—almost a debate—before expressing themselves to Cudgel, whose eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Apparently, Yoda escaped Kashyyyk in an evacuation pod. Chewbacca, here, says he carried Yoda on his shoulders to the pod.”
Starstone came to her feet, nearly tipping over a platter of food. “He’s alive?”
“He could be,” Cudgel said after a moment. “After the last of the clone troopers left, the Wookiees searched local space for the pod, but no distress-beacon transmissions were picked up.”
“Was the pod hyperspace-capable?”
Cudgel shook his head.
“But it could have been retrieved by a passing ship.”
The Wookiees conversed.
Cudgel listened attentively. “There’s a chance it was.”
Starstone looked at Tarfful. “What makes you think so?”
Cudgel ran his hand over his mouth. “Wookiee Senator Yarua reported that rumors circulating in the Senate claim Yoda led an attack on Emperor Palpatine in the Senate Rotunda itself.”
“And?”
“Same rumor has it he was killed.”
“Master Yoda doesn’t lose,” Siadem Forte said from his stool.
Cudgel returned a sympathetic nod. “Lots of us used to say that about the Jedi.”
Starstone broke the silence that descended on the control room. “If Master Yoda is alive, then there’s hope for all of us. He’ll find us before we find him.”
She felt renewed; hopeful once more.
“Tarfful asks what you plan to do now,” Cudgel said.
“I suppose we’ll continue our search,” Starstone said. “Master Kenobi was on Utapau, and has yet to be heard from.”
Tarfful issued what sounded like a sustained groan.
“He is honored to offer you safe haven on Kashyyyk, if you wish. The Wookiees can make it appear that you are valued customers.”
“You would do that for us?” Starstone asked Tarfful.
His response was plaintive.
“The Wookiees owe the Jedi a great debt,” Cudgel translated. “And debts are always honored.”
A signal sounded from one of the consoles, and Cudgel and the Wookiees gathered around an inset screen. The human’s expression was grave when he swung to the Jedi.
“An Imperial troop carrier is descending to the Kachirho platform.”
Starstone’s face lost color. “We shouldn’t have come here,” she said suddenly. “We’ve endangered all of you!”