The two craft lifted off into smoke and withering night, spiraling up through resuming enemy fire toward Kachirho’s midlevel balconies. In the transport’s cramped cockpit with Cudgel, Filli, and Chewbacca—wedged into his seat, his head grazing the ceiling—Starstone clenched her white-knuckled hands on the shaking arms of the acceleration chair.

She couldn’t bring herself to lift her gaze to the viewports, for fear of what sights might greet her.

As if reading her mind, Cudgel said: “You can’t save an entire planet, kid. And it’s not like you didn’t try.”

Chewbacca reinforced the remark with a gutsy bass rumble, repeatedly slamming his huge hands down on the transport’s control yoke for emphasis.

“The Wookiees knew that their days of freedom were numbered,” Cudgel translated. “Kashyyyk will only be the first nonhuman world to be enslaved.”

Chewbacca threw the weary transport through a sudden evasive turn, nearly spilling everyone from their chairs. Through the viewport, Starstone caught a glimpse of Vader’s black shuttle, tumbling toward the ground. Firewalling the throttle, Chewbacca clawed for altitude, barely escaping the flames of the crashed shuttle’s mushrooming fireball.

Archyr’s voice issued through the cockpit enunciators as the drop ship appeared in the starboard panel of the viewport. “Close call!”

Growling irritably, Chewbacca ran a fast systems check.

“Tail singed,” Cudgel told Archyr through the comlink. “But everything else is intact.”

The drop ship remained in view to starboard.

“Half the balcony fell with the shuttle,” Archyr continued. “There isn’t much room to put down, even if you’re still fool enough to risk it. Whatever Olee has in mind, she’d better be quick about it.”

Cudgel swiveled to her. “You got that?”

She nodded as the ravaged balcony came into view, in worse shape than she had feared. Most of the rim was gone, and the few areas that still clung to the trunk of the wroshyr had been holed and crisped by turbolaser bolts. The bodies of Wookiees and stormtroopers sprawled in the spreading flames.

“I don’t see any sign of Shryne or Vader,” Archyr said over the comlink.

“Turbos could have killed them—” Cudgel started when Starstone cut him off.

“No. I would know.”

Chewbacca directed a yodeling bray at her.

“He believes you,” Cudgel translated.

Starstone leaned toward Chewbacca. “You think you can set us down?”

Chewbacca lowed dubiously, then nodded. Feathering the repulsorlift lever, he began to cheat the transport closer to the wroshyr. The craft was meters from landing when, without warning, what remained of the wooden tier sheared away from the massive trunk, taking several lower tiers with it as it disintegrated and fell.

Starstone sucked in her breath as Chewbacca pulled the ship sharply away from the bole. Half out of her chair, she focused her gaze on the cave-like opening to the tree’s dimly lighted interior and stretched out with the Force.

“They’re inside! I can feel them.”

Filli pulled her back into her chair. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Archyr’s voiced barked through the enunciator. “Gunships approaching.”

Cudgel forced her to look at him. “What would Shryne want you to do?”

She didn’t have to think about it. Blowing out her breath, she said: “Chewbacca, get us out of this.”

Relieved sighs came from Filli and Cudgel, a melancholy rumble from the Wookiee, who lifted the transport’s nose and accelerated.

“Steer clear of the lake,” Archyr warned. Again the drop ship came alongside, warding off strikes from in-rushing Imperial gunships. “We’ve only got a narrow escape vector, north-northwest.”

Dodging fire, the two ships raced into a burnt-orange sunset and climbed for the stars, mingling with scores of escaping ferries and cargo haulers. Turbolaser bolts rained down from ships in orbit, and across the darkening curve of the planet, fires raged.

Lowing in anguish and pounding one giant fist on the instrument panel, Chewbacca pointed to a bright burning in the canopy.

“Rwookrrorro,” Cudgel said. “Chewbacca’s tree-village.”

The stars were just losing their shimmer when the communications suite toned. Filli routed the transmission through the cockpit speakers.

“Glad to see you’ve come to your senses,” Jula said. “Is Roan with either of you?”

“Negative, Jula,” Filli said sadly.

Save for bursts of static, the enunciator remained silent for a long moment; then Jula’s voice returned. “After Alderaan, there was nothing I could say …” Her words trailed off, but she wasn’t finished. “None of us is out of this yet, anyway. Vader or whoever’s in charge has Interdictor cruisers parked in orbit. No ships have been able to jump to hyperspace.”

“Does the Drunk Dancer have enough firepower to take on the cruiser?” Cudgel asked.

“Filli,” Jula said, “inform whoever asked that question that I’m not about to go to guns with a Detainer CC-twenty-two-hundred.”

As the transport reached the edge of Kashyyyk’s envelope, magnified views of local space showed hundreds of ships trapped in the artificial gravity well generated by the Interdictor’s powerful projectors. Interspersed among the ensnared vessels drifted the blackened husks of Separatist warships that had been there since the end of the war.

“Too bad we can’t start up one of those Sep destroyers,” Cudgel lamented. “They have guns enough to deal with that cruiser.”

Starstone and Filli looked at each other.

“We might know a way,” he said.