[Legacy Of The Force] - 07
Chapter 1
ABOVE THE PLANET KASHYYYK, ABOARD THE MILLENNIUM FALCON
The Falcon banked over a vision of hell.
Directly below was a roiling surface of blacks and yellows, reds and oranges. Eastward, the carpet of fire gave way to doomed forest. The line between the two zones was an irregular and uncertain one, and even at the distance of a couple of kilometers Han Solo could see individual trees at the border burst into fire, some of them exploding from the heat.
Westward, superheated air rose in a column kilometers in diameter, hauling smoke high into the atmosphere, obscuring the afternoon sun. And it was the smoke column that showed the real danger of the maelstrom. As that column rose, it drew in air from all directions, constantly fanning the fire around it, feeding the voracious beast that burned out of control.
It had once been an unbroken vista of soaring wroshyr trees and other foliage. But a few days earlier, the Star Destroyer Anakin Solo, at the order of Jacen Solo, had directed its long-range turbolasers at the surface of Kashyyyk, concentrating fire to cause square-kilometer patches of forest to explode in flames. These strikes were intended to punish the Wookiees for harboring Jedi and for dragging their feet before committing their forces to Jacen’s Galactic Alliance.
Punish they had. The fires had grown into firestorms raging out of control ever since.
The Falcon kicked as she glided over a thermal updraft. Han brought her back to smooth, level flight, cocking his head to hear any sound of a panel dislodge, a bolt kicked free by the unexpected motion, but no new noise was added to the catalog of thousands he knew by heart.
The communications board crackled with Leia’s voice. “Sweep complete. I’ve planted the last beacon.”
Han sent the disk-shaped freighter into a bank and descent toward their rendezvous point, about two kilometers outside the fire zone. “Any problems?”
“Nothing but. Had to make some quick repairs on one of the beacons. And I keep having to dodge streams of fleeing animals.”
The Falcon bucked harder as a particularly ferocious thermal caught her, and then she was out over unburned forest. The ground was higher here, the trees far shorter-not one of them was over half a kilometer in height. Geological surveys showed that the soil here was too shallow to support full-grown wroshyrs-a subterranean ridge of stone, stunting the trees, would mark the fire’s stopping point, in this area at least.
Han checked the comm board, looking for the signal being transmitted by Leia’s last beacon, and homed in on it. “Waroo! Stand by on the winch.”
There was an affirmative growl across the intercom. Han could also hear it, more faintly, echoing up the cockpit access corridor behind him. Waroo was standing by at the starboard docking ring, open to Kashyyyk’s atmosphere, ready to retrieve Leia.
Han allowed himself a brief smile. It was good to have a Wookiee aboard the Falcon again. It reminded him of the old days, when he and Chewbacca were young and carefree-assuming that being hunted by bounty hunters and Imperial anti-smuggler forces didn’t count as “cares.”
And Waroo wasn’t just any Wookiee. He was Chewbacca’s son. A clever son, a good warrior.
If things had been very different, if Han’s son Jacen had not turned out the way he had, perhaps the Falcon could have been Jacen’s someday, with Waroo at his side, a continuation of Han’s roguish legacy.
Instead Jacen had become something dark, something terrible, a self-appointed leader determined to impose rigid control over the galaxy. He had conspired, tortured, betrayed, murdered, all with a confidence in the Tightness of his cause that was the match of any madman’s.
And though Han tried to tell himself that Jacen was dead to him, nothing but a stranger wearing his son’s face and name, each new outrage Jacen committed still gripped his heart in an iron fist and squeezed hard.
The communications board beeped to indicate that they were close to the beacon source. Han depressed the bow to give himself a better downward look. He heard a thump from the starboard side, followed by a growl of complaint, and grinned again. “Sorry. No more sudden maneuvers. I promise.”
The wroshyrs were still tall enough here that the forest floor was a deeply gloomy and dangerous place. There was no clearing to set down in. But Leia was visible, her white robes starkly contrasted among all the greenery, standing on an upper branch as if loitering on a Coruscant pedwalk, unconcerned about winds or the potentially pesky force of gravity. She waved.
Han positioned the Falcon directly above her. “All right, Waroo. Bring her up.” A moment later he heard the whirring sound of the winch lowering its line to Leia.
The crew of the Millennium Falcon was about to commit an act that, under other circumstances, would have been considered as horrible as Jacen’s setting of fires … because the two acts were almost the same.