Hero's Trial: Agents of Chaos I Read online

“I am both, and I am neither,” the Gotal said with purposeful ambiguity. “I am an H’kig priest.”

  Harrar twisted spiritedly on the cushion to address his retinue. “Good fortune. We have a holy one in our midst.” His gaze returned to the Gotal. “Tell me something of your religion, H’kig priest.”

  “What interest could you have in my beliefs?”

  “Ah, but I, too, am a performer of rituals. As one priest to another, then.”

  “We H’kig believe in the value of simple living,” the Gotal said plainly.

  “Yes, but to what end? To ensure bountiful harvests, to escalate yourself, to secure a place in the afterlife?”

  “Virtue is its own reward.”

  Harrar adopted a puzzled look. “Your gods have said as much?”

  “It is simply our truth—one among many.”

  “One among many. And what of the truth the Yuuzhan Vong bring you? Aver that you recognize our gods and I may be inclined to spare your life.”

  The Gotal stared at him dispassionately. “Only a false god would thirst so for death and destruction.”

  “Then it’s true: you fear death.”

  “I have no fear of a death suffered in the cause of truth, the alleviation of suffering, or the abolishment of evil.”

  “Suffering?” Harrar leaned menacingly toward him. “Let me tell you of suffering, priest. Misery is the mainstay of life. Those who accept this truth understand that death is the release from suffering. That’s why we go willingly to our deaths, for we are the resigned ones.” He scanned the captives and raised his voice. “We ask no more of you than we do ourselves: to repay the gods for the sacrifices they endured in creating the cosmos. We offer flesh and blood so that their work might endure.”

  “Our god demands no tribute other than good acts,” the Gotal rejoined.

  “Acts that raise calluses,” Harrar said in disdain. “If this is all that is expected of you, it’s no wonder your gods have abandoned you in your time of need.”

  “We have not been abandoned. We still have the Jedi.”

  Murmurs of fellowship moved through the throng of captives, reticently at first, then with mounting conviction.

  Harrar regarded the disparate faces below him: the labrous and the thin-lipped, the rugose and the smooth, the hairless and the hirsute, the horned and the furrowed. In their home galaxy, the Yuuzhan Vong had attempted to eradicate such diversity, prompting wars that had raged for millennia and had claimed the lives of peoples and worlds too numerous to count. This time, though, the Yuuzhan Vong planned to be more circumspect, destroying only those peoples and worlds necessary to complete the cleansing.

  “These Jedi are your gods?” Harrar asked at last.

  The Gotal took a moment to answer. “The Jedi Knights are the trustees of peace and justice.”

  “And this ‘Force’ I have heard about—how would you describe it?”

  The Gotal grinned faintly. “It is something you will never touch. Although if I didn’t know better, I would swear you were sprung from its dark side.”

  Harrar’s interest was piqued. “The Force contains both light and dark?”

  “As do all things.”

  “And which are you with regard to us? Are you so sure you embody the light?”

  “I know only what my heart teaches.”

  Harrar deliberated. “Then this struggle is more than some petty war. This is a contest of gods, in which you and I are but mere instruments.”

  The Gotal held his head high. “That may be so. But the final judgment is already decided.”

  Harrar sneered. “May that belief comfort you in your final hour, priest—which, I assure you, is close at hand.” Again he addressed the multitudes. “Up until now your species have faced only Yuuzhan Vong warriors and politicians. As of today know that the true architects of your destiny have arrived.”

  He beckoned his entourage forward. “This Force is a strange, stubborn faith,” he said quietly as one of his attendants came alongside the dovin basal cushion. “If ever we’re to rule here, we need to understand just how it binds these myriad beings together. And we need to vanquish the Jedi Knights, once and for all.”

  TWO

  In a galaxy fraught with wonders, the convergence of columnar tree trunks and forking branches that supported the Wookiee city of Rwookrrorro enjoyed a place of special honor. Viewed from above against its backdrop of fathomless forest, the city appeared to have been rescued from the planet’s harsh underworld and submitted to Kashyyyk’s scudded sky as an example of nature and technology in consummate poise.

  At the outskirts of the city, distant from the circular buildings that rose from its spongy floor and scaled the trunks of the giant trees themselves, atop a massive fallen branch that spanned several treetops, a ceremony was in progress, enacted in observance of nature’s timeless cycle of life and death.

  The participants, including two dozen Wookiees and humans of both sexes, were arranged in a loose circle around a wooden table that happened also to be circular. Some stood, others sat on their haunches or on the ground, but all wore solemn expressions, save for the group’s only nonliving members, the droids C-3PO and R2-D2, whose alloy countenances remained, in all circumstances, essentially neutral.

  C-3PO stood with his bulbous head tilted slightly to one side and his arms bent at angles rarely adopted by the life-form after which he had been modeled. To the droid the rigid posture seemed entirely natural, a consequence of the way he was put together and the ever-changing demands of the servomotors that permitted him to gesticulate and move about. Beside him, R2-D2 stood still as a fixture, locomotion struts planted firmly on the fallen wroshyr tree branch and center tread retracted.

  In passing, C-3PO noted that the view from the fallen branch was really quite extraordinary. Fog was thick in the treetops, concealing the nearest of the Wookiee nursery rings and diffusing the morning light as might a prism. The view could even be said—though certainly not by him—to be breathtaking.

  [We gather in memory of Chewbacca: honorable son, beloved mate, devoted father, loyal friend and comrade in arms, champion and clan uncle to all of us in spirit, if not in the traditional way.]

  The Wookiee speaker was called Ralrracheen, though C-3PO had often heard him referred to simply as Ralrra. He was tall and aged, even for his arboreal species, but it wasn’t the graying muzzle that distinguished him so much as his curious speech impediment. On any other occasion C-3PO would have been tasked to serve as translator and interpreter, but none of the humans present had need of his polyglot faculties that particular morning.

  [In Chewbacca, the defiant flame burned brightest,] Ralrra went on, black nose twitching and long arms dangling at his sides. [On Kashyyyk or farr afield on distant worlds, he was never less than courageous and incorruptible—a Wookiee with heart enough for ten and eagerr strength enough forr fifty.]

  Chewbacca had died six standard months earlier, during an ill-fated rescue attempt on the planet Sernpidal, after it had been targeted for destruction by the Yuuzhan Vong. The fact that it hadn’t been possible to retrieve his body was a source of sorrow to all, for had Chewbacca been returned to Kashyyyk a funeral would have been held—though for honor family members only. What Wookiees did with their dead remained a closely guarded secret. Some experts speculated that the dead were cremated; others, that they were either buried within tree knots or lowered by kshyy vines into the murky depths from which the species had risen. Still others claimed that the dead were hacked to pieces with sacred ryyyk blades and scattered on select wroshyr branches to be carried off by predatory katarns or kroyie birds.

  C-3PO understood that he may not have been allowed to attend the funeral, in any case. Everyone attending the memorial was a member of Chewbacca’s extended family, but it was unlikely that the affiliation applied to him—much less to his counterpart, R2-D2. For all their espousal to machines, intelligent and otherwise, flesh and bloods could be extremely proprietary about matters of kinship and
family.

  Close to Ralrra squatted Chewbacca’s father, Attichitcuk, along with Chewbacca’s auburn-furred sister, Kallabow. Alongside them sat Chewbacca’s widow, Mallatobuck, and their son, Lumpawarrump, who had taken the name Lumpawaroo—Waroo for short—on the successful completion of his rite of passage. Interspersed among the Wookiee contingent stood assorted friends, kin-brothers, cousins, nieces, and nephews—Lowbacca among the latter, a Jedi Knight.

  The humans numbered only six: Master Luke, Mistress Leia, Master Han, and the three Solo offspring, Anakin, Jacen, and Jaina. Conspicuously absent was Lando Calrissian, who, much to Master Han’s disquiet, had sent word that unexpected—and unspecified—developments would prevent his attending. Master Luke’s wife, Mara, might have attended if a sudden relapse in her mysterious malady hadn’t forced her to remain on Coruscant.

  The exquisitely carved table at the center of the circle rested on a carpet of wroshyr tree leaves, its pedestal base entwined with dark-green kshyy vines and its round top strewn with kolvissh blossoms, wasaka berries, Orga root, and the glossy yellow petals of the syren plant. The cool air was redolent with the aroma of smoldering tree-resin incense.

  [Here on Kashyyyk, Chewbacca’s mettle made itself known at an early age,] Ralrra continued. [With his late friend Salporin]—he paused to glance at Salporin’s widow, Gorrlyn—[Chewbacca left the nursery ring to venture down along the Rryatt Trail to the Well of the Dead, in the heart of the Shadow Forest. Armed only with a ryyyk blade, he braved mock shyrr, jaddyyk moss, needlebug, trap-spinnerr, and shadow-keeperr to harvest strands from the heart of the flesh-eating syren, thus earning the right to wearr a baldric, carry a weapon, and confirm the name he chose to be known by. Here, too, Chewbacca ventured into the great Anarrad pit—not once or even twice, but five times, taking down the taloned katarn on three of those hunts and once receiving a wound from the beast in return.] Ralrra indicated a spot on his shaggy torso. [Here, on the left side of his chest.

  [In preparation for his marriage, which took place atop this very branch, Chewbacca descended to the fifth level and there with bare hands captured a quillarat and presented it to Malla as an expression of his love. And when it came time for Waroo’s initiation, Chewbacca was steadfast in his support and encouraging of his son’s quest of the scuttle grazerr.]

  While some of Chewbacca’s accomplishments on his homeworld were familiar to C-3PO, his memory lacked anything in the way of corroborative data, so he summoned recollections of his own experiences with the Wookiee and was immediately inundated with a rapid-fire sequence of images, some of them dating back twenty-five standard years.

  His first sight of Chewbacca, standing like a cinnamon-colored tower outside Docking Bay 94 in the Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine … Chewbacca as a sore loser in dejarik holoboard contests … Chewbacca on Bespin’s Cloud City, incorrectly reattaching C-3PO’s head after it had been used by Ugnaughts as a plaything in a game of Wookiee in the Middle … Master Han’s assertion that Chewbacca was always thinking with his stomach … The many, many times Chewbacca was referred to as “flea-bitten furball,” “overgrown mophead,” “walking carpet,” or “noisy brute,” occasionally by C-3PO himself—in imitation of humans, of course—and always with affection, given Chewbacca’s scrupulous character and great size.

  A sudden flutter gripped C-3PO, and he found that he was unable to summon additional recollections. An unnatural and most discomfiting heat surged through his circuitry, prompting him to run a diagnostic program, which ultimately left the source of the glitch unrevealed.

  Ralrra woofed, brayed, and barked.

  [Natural curiosity compelled Chewbacca to leave Kashyyyk at an early age, but like all of us he was soon enslaved by the Empire. Fortunately, Chewbacca regained his freedom at the hands of a man of like strength and honorr—ourr revered brotherr Han Solo. And in the company of Han Solo, to whom he had pledged his life, Chewbacca was to play a crucial role in the Rebellion, and in the events that led eventually to the downfall of Emperor Palpatine.]

  C-3PO focused his photoreceptors on Master Han, whose eyes were red-rimmed and narrowed, and whose right hand Mistress Jaina had taken between her own. The dark-blue military-style trousers Master Han was wearing were similar to the tattered pair he had attempted to preserve for posterity, but which only the previous day had proved incapable of conforming to Master Han’s slightly increased waistline and had torn irreparably. Present during the incident—the cause of no small measure of vexation to Master Han—C-3PO had assisted in affixing to the outside seams of the replacement trousers twin embellishments known as Corellian Bloodstripes.

  Across from the father and daughter stood Master Jacen and Mistress Leia, her head resting on her elder son’s shoulder and her cheeks glistening with tears. Near them squatted Master Anakin, brooding and withdrawn, along with Master Luke, certainly no stranger to death, having lost both his natural and adoptive parents, as well as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda, two of his Jedi mentors.

  [Chewbacca went on to become a soldierr in the New Republic,] Ralrra boomed and rumbled. [He aided in Kashyyyk’s liberation afterr the Battle of Endorr. But he remained first and foremost devoted to Han Solo, as friend and indebted protectorr, and as guardian to Han Solo’s spouse and three children.] Ralrra turned to Han. [It was Chewbacca’s honorr to have been able to come to his friend’s rescue on several occasions, even as recently as the crisis involving the Yevetha, when he freed Han Solo from imprisonment aboard a Yevethan warship.]

  Once more C-3PO tightened the focus of his photoreceptors on Master Han, who lowered his head in abject grief, as Jaina stroked his shoulders. Master Han’s relationship with Chewbacca was similar to C-3PO’s with R2-D2, though it seemed at times that the two droids had been together even longer than had the human and the Wookiee.

  R2-D2 must have been regarding Master Han, as well, for the astromech suddenly rotated his monocular receptor to C-3PO and warbled tremulously, almost as if he, too, had picked up an enigmatic flutter.

  C-3PO changed the cant of his head.

  The past several months had afforded ample opportunities to study humans in grief, but for all his observations he was no closer to understanding the process than he had been before Chewbacca’s death on that dreadful world. All living beings eventually died, when not from the effects of age, then as the result of accidents or illnesses almost too myriad to catalog. Death was in some ways analogous to deactivation or memory erasure, but in fact it was something quite different, a total ceasing-to-be—the end to all adventuring, indeed. In the face of that revelation, C-3PO felt compelled to wonder if he hadn’t been wrong all along about his lot in life. If, as he so often declared, droids were made to suffer, what then of flesh and bloods?

  Perhaps it was better not to know.

  As constructed, C-3PO was incapable of shedding tears or enduring heartbreak, as it was called, but his programming did allow him to experience sorrow of a sort, if not nearly to the depth experienced by humans and other living beings. And it was suddenly clear that sorrow was the source of the flutter that continued to plague him. Try as he might, he could not summon a sound thought, and with each glance at Master Han his dismay increased.

  As the one closest to Chewbacca—and perhaps because he was a very human being—Master Han seemed to be suffering the most, alternating between anguish and rage, despondency and agitation. The man C-3PO had once dismissed as impossible was now deeply distraught, as unreachable as if he were encased in carbonite, and there seemed nothing C-3PO could do to put the matter right. Being fluent in millions of forms of communication did not guarantee an understanding of human behavior, let alone human emotions. C-3PO was only a droid, after all, and not very knowledgeable about such things.

  There had been an incident during Master Han’s courtship of then Princess Leia when Master Han had had occasion to place a hand on C-3PO’s arm and say, “You’re a good droid, Threepio. There’s not many droids I like as much as I like you.” He had gone on to
ask C-3PO’s advice on matters of the heart, and C-3PO had gladly provided a poem for Master Han to use as ammunition in his contest with Prince Isolder for the princess’s hand.

  But curse my metal body, C-3PO said to himself. Why hadn’t his maker equipped him with the necessary programming to come to Master Han’s aid now? Instead, all he could offer was mindless philosophizing!

  [Adventure is as alluring and potentially dangerous a thing as the heart of the syren plant,] Ralrra roared plaintively. [But even Chewbacca’s final act was one of sacrifice, giving his life to save someone dearr to him.] The aged Wookiee looked at young Anakin, then at Master Han and Mistress Leia. [And as everr he kept his claws retracted in battle. Now, in the same way the branches of the wroshyr seek out and support one anotherr, Chewbacca’s spirit merges with and gives sustenance to ourr own, strengthening us forr the challenges we have yet to confront.]

  Warfare had figured in C-3PO’s existence for so long that a new invasion shouldn’t have come as a surprise. But there was something different about the Yuuzhan Vong and the harrowing war they were waging on a galactic scale. It wasn’t merely that they didn’t distinguish among species or among worlds—New Republic, Imperial Remnant, or nonaligned—or even that their biotic warships and weapons packed such awesome destructive power. What worried C-3PO most was that this most recent conflict was one in which not even droids were spared. And that meant that, like it or not, he might yet arrive at a true understanding of grief and death.

  The circular table was covered with foodstuffs—bowls of xachibik broth, barbecued trakkrrrn ribs, forest-honey cakes, salad garnished with rillrrnnn seeds, and flasks of wines, juices, and liquors. Humans and Wookiees were conversing in groups, recounting tales of Chewbacca’s exploits that brought laughter, tears, or moments of sober reflection. The breeze had picked up, stirring leaves and enlivening wind chimes.

  Han sat dejectedly on a short-legged wooden stool, resting his elbows on his knees. “Y’know, I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I think I actually envy Threepio.”