Dark Lord: Star Wars: The Rise of Darth Vader (Star Wars: Dark Lord Book 3) by Luceno James

Author:Luceno, James [Luceno, James]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307795816
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

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.

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