Chapter 4
The trees of Goshen stood a thousand feet tall. Their trunks, covered with shaggy, rust bark, rose straight as pillars, some of them as big around as a house, some thin as a leg. Their foliage was spindly, but lush in color, scattering the sunlight in delicate blue-green patterns over the forest floor.
Distributed thickly amongst these ancient giants was the usual array of woodsy flora - pines of several species, various deciduous forms, variously gnarled and leafy. The groundcover was primarily fern, but so dense in spots as to resemble a gentle green sea that rippled softly in the forest breeze.
This was the entire system: verdant, primeval, silent. Light filtered through the sheltering branches like golden ichor, as if the very air were alive. It was warm, and it was cool. This was Goshen.
The stolen Woodwind shuttle sat in a clearing many miles from the Woodwind landing port, camouflaged with a blanket of dead branches, leaves, and mulch. In addition the little case was thoroughly dwarfed by the towering trees. Its steely hull might have looked incongruous here, had it not been so totally inconspicuous.
On the hill adjacent to the clearing, the Brass contingent was just beginning to make its way up a steep trail. Amanda, Bruce, Keoni, and Chris led the way, followed in single file by the raggedy, helmeted squad of the strike team. This unit was composed of the elite ground fighters of the Brass Alliance. A scruffy bunch in some ways, they'd each been hand-picked for initiative, cunning, and ferocity. Some were trained commandos, some paroled criminals - but they all hated the Empire with a passion that exceeded self-preservation. And they all knew this was the crucial raid. If they failed to destroy the shield generator here, the Brass were doomed. No second chances.
Consequently, no one had to tell them to be alert as they made their way silently up the forest path. They were, everyone, more alert than they had ever been.
Tim2-Sax2 and A-10dr brought up the rear of the brigade. Tim2 swiveled round and round as he went, blinking his sax sensor lights at the infinitely tall trees which surrounded them.
Up ahead, Bruce and Amanda reached the crest of the hill. They dropped to the ground, crawled the last few feet, and peered over the edge. Bruchacca raised his great hand, signaling the rest of the group to stop. All at once, the forest seemed to become much more silent. Except for A-10's blithering. "Oh, I told you it was dangerous here."
Chris and Keoni crawled forward on their bellies, to view what the others were observing. Pointing through the ferns, Bruce and Amanda cautioned stealth. Not far below, in a glen beside a clear pool, two Woodwind scouts had set up temporary camp. They were fixing a meal of rations and were preoccupied with warming it over a portable cooker. Two speeder bikes were parked nearby.
"Should we try and go around?" whispered Amanda.
"It'll take time," Chris shook his head.
Keoni peeked from behind a rock. "This whole party'll be for nothing if they see us."
Amanda motioned the rest of the squad to stay where they were; then she, Chris, Keoni, and Bruchacca quietly edged closer to the scout camp. When they were quite near the clearing, but still covered by underbrush, Solo slid quickly to the lead position. "Bruce and I will take care of this," he rasped. "You stay here."
"Quietly," Chris warned. "There might be more of them out there."
"Hey," Keoni said, flashing them his most roguish smile. "It's me." Then he jumped up with his hairy partner and rushed into the clearing.
Before either Chris or Amanda could react, they heard a loud commotion in the glen. They flattened to the ground and watched.
Keoni was engaged in a rousing fist fight with one of the scouts - he hadn't looked so happy in days. The other scout jumped on his speeder bike to escape. But by the time he'd ignited the engines, Bruce was able to get off a few shots from his crossbow laser. The ill-fated scout crashed instantly against an enormous tree; a brief, muffled explosion followed.
Amanda drew her laser Trumpet and raced into the battle zone, followed closely by Chris. As soon as they were running clear, though, several large laser blasts went off all around them, tumbling them to the ground. Amanda lost her trumpet.
Dazed, they both looked up to see two more Woodwind scouts emerge from the far side of the clearing, heading for their speeder bikes hidden in the peripheral foliage.
Amanda staggered to her feet. "Over there. Two more of them!"
"I see them," answered Chris, rising. "Wait, Amanda!"
But Amanda had ideas of her own. She ran to the remaining speeder bike, charged it up, and took off in pursuit of the fleeing scouts. As she tore past Chris, he jumped up behind her on the bike, and off they flew.
"Quick, jam their comlink!" he shouted to her over her shoulder, over the roar of the rocket engines. "Center switch!"
As Chris and Amanda soared out of the clearing after the Woodwinds, Keoni and Bruce were just subduing the last scout. "Hey, wait!" Solo shouted; but they were gone. He threw his weapon to the ground in frustration, and the rest of the Brass commando squad poured over the rise and into the clearing.
Chris and Amanda sped through the dense foliage, a few feet off the ground, Amanda at the controls, Chris grabbing on behind her. The two escaping Woodwind scouts had a good lead, but at two hundred miles per hour, Amanda was the better pilot - the talent ran in her family.
She let off a burst from the speeder's laser tuba periodically, but was still too far behind to be very accurate. The explosions hit away from the moving targets, splintering trees and setting the shrubbery afire, as the bikes weaved in and out between massive, imposing branches.
"Move closer!" Chris shouted.
Amanda opened the throttle, closed the gap. The two scouts sensed their pursuer gaining and recklessly veered this way and that, skimming through a narrow opening between two trees. One of the bikes scraped the bark, tipping the scout almost out of control, slowing him significantly.
"Get alongside that one!" Chris yelled into Amanda's ear.
She pulled her speeder so close to the scout's, their steering vanes scraped hideously against each other. Chris suddenly leapt from the back of Amanda's bike to the back of the scout's, grabbed the Woodwind warrior around the neck, and flipped him off. The white-clad trooper smashed into a thick trunk with a bone-shattering crunch, and settled forever into the sea of ferns.
Chris scooted forward to the driver's seat of the speeder bike, played with the controls a few seconds, and lurched forward, following Amanda, who'd pulled ahead. The two of them now tore after the remaining scout.
Over hill and under Stonebridge they flew, narrowly avoiding collision, flaming dry vines in their afterburn. The chase swung north and passed a gully where two more Woodwind scouts were resting. A moment later, they swung into pursuit, now hot on Chris and Amanda's tail, blasting away with laser tubas. Chris, still behind Amanda, took a glancing blow.
"Keep on that one!" he shouted up at her, indicating the scout in the lead. "I'll take these two!"
Amanda shot ahead. Chris, at the same instant, flared up his retrorockets, slamming the bike into rapid deceleration. The two scouts on his tail zipped past him in a blur on either side, unable to slow their momentum. Chris immediately roared into high velocity again, firing with his laser tubas, suddenly in pursuit of his pursuers.
His third round hit its mark: one of the scouts, blown out of control, went spinning against a boulder in a rumble of flame.
The scout's cohort took a single glance at the flash, and put his bike into supercharge mode, speeding even faster. Chris kept pace.
Far ahead, Amanda and the first scout continued their own high-speed slalom through the barricades of impassive trunks and low-slung branches. She had to brake through so many turns, in fact, Amanda seemed unable to draw any closer to her quarry. Suddenly she shot into the air, at an unbelievably steep incline, and quickly vanished from sight.
The scout turned in confusion, uncertain whether to relax or cringe at his pursuer's sudden disappearance. Her whereabouts became clear soon enough. Out of the tree-tops, Amanda dove down on him, tuba blasting from above. The scout's bike took the shockwave from a near hit. Her speed was even greater than she'd anticipated, and in a moment she was racing alongside him. But before she knew what was happening, he reached down and drew a trumpet from his holster - and before she could react, he fired.
Her bike spun out of control. She jumped free just in time - the speeder exploded on a giant tree, as Amanda rolled clear into a tangle of matted vines, rotting logs, and shallow water. The last thing she saw was the orange fireball through a cloud of smoking greenery; and then blackness.
The scout looked behind him at the explosion, with a satisfied sneer. When he faced forward again, though, the smug look faded, for he was on a collision course with a fallen tree. In a moment it was all over but the flaming.
Meanwhile, Chris was closing fast on the last scout. As they wove from tree to tree, Chris eased up behind and then drew even with the Woodwind rider. The fleeing soldier suddenly swerved, slamming his bike into Chris' - they both tipped precariously, barely missing a large fallen tree in their path. The scout zoomed under it, Chris over it - and when he came down on the other side, he crashed directly on top of the scouts vehicle. Their steering vanes locked.
The bikes were shaped more or less like one-man sleds, with long thin rods extending from their snouts, and fluttery ailerons for guidance at the tip of the rods. With these vanes locked, the bikes flew as one, though either rider could steer.
The scout banked hard right, to try to smash Chris into an onrushing grove of saplings on the right. But at the last second Chris leaned all of his weight left, turning the locked speeders horizontal, with Chris on top, and the scout on the bottom.
The biker scout suddenly stopped resisting Chris' leftward leaning and threw his own weight in the same direction, resulting in the bikes flipping over three hundred sixty degrees and coming to rest exactly upright once more…but with an enormous tree looming directly in front of Chris.
Without thinking, he leapt from his bike. A fraction of a second later, the scout veered steeply left - the steering vanes separated - and Chris' riderless speeder crashed explosively into the redwood.
Chris rolled, decelerating, up a moss-covered slop. The scout swooped high, circled around, and came looking for him.
Chris stumbled out of the bushes as the speeder was bearing down on him full throttle, laser tuba firing. Chris ignited his bandsaber and stood his ground. His weapon deflected every bolt the scout fired at him; but the bike kept coming. In a few moments, the two would meet; the bike accelerated even more, intent on bodily slicing the young Trombone in half. At the last moment, though, Chris stepped aside - with perfect timing, like a master matador facing a rocket-powered bull - and chopped off the bike's steering vanes with a single mighty slash of his bandsaber.
The bike quickly began to shudder; then pitch and roll. In a second it was out of control entirely, and in another second it was a rumbling billow of fire on the forest floor.
Chris snuffed out his bandsaber and headed back to join the others.
XxX
Keoni and Bruce crouched opposite each other in the forest clearing, being quiet, being near. The rest of the strike squad relaxed - as much as was possible - spread out around them in groups of twos and threes. They all waited.
Even A-10 was silent. He sat beside Tim2, twiddling his thumbs for lack of anything better to do. The others checked their watches, or their weapons, as the afternoon sunlight ticked away.
Tim2 sat, unmoving except for the little radar screen that stuck out of his saxophone, revolving, scanning the forest. He exuded the calm patience of a utilized function, a program being run.
Suddenly, he beeped.
A-10 ceased his obsessive twiddling and looked apprehensively into the forest. "Section Leader Solo, somebody's coming," he translated.
The rest of the squad faced out; weapons were raised. A twig cracked beyond the western perimeter. No one breathed.
With a weary stride, Chris stepped out of the foliage, into the clearing. All relaxed, lowered their trumpets. Chris was too tired to care. Keoni ran forward, shouting, "Chris!"
Solo looked around, into the forest Chris ha just come from. "Where's Amanda?"
Chris' face suddenly turned to one of concern. "What? She didn't come back?"
"I thought she was with you," Keoni's voice marginally rose in pitch and volume.
"We got separated," Chris explained. He exchanged a grim look with Solo. "We'd better go look for her."
"Take the squad ahead," Solo ordered the Brass officer who was second in command of the strike squad. "We'll meet at the shield generator at 0-300."
The officer saluted and immediately organized the troops. Within a minute they were filing silently into the forest, greatly relieved to be moving at last.
"Come on, Tim2. We'll need your scanners," Chris said.
"Don't worry, Master Chris. We know what to do," A-10 assured him but then he rounded on Tim2 as he, Keoni, Chris, and Bruce followed him into the woods.
"And you said it was pretty here! Hmph!"
XxX
The first thing Amanda was aware of was her left elbow. It was wet. It was lying in a pool of water, getting quite soaked.
She moved the elbow out of the water with a little splash, revealing something else: pain - pain in her entire arm when it moved. For the time being, she decided to keep it still.
The next things to enter her consciousness were sounds. The splash her elbow had made, the rustle of leaves, an occasional bird chirp. Forest sounds. With a grunt, she took a short breath and noted the grunting sound.
Smells began to fill her nostrils next: humid, mossy smells, leafy oxygen smells, the odor of a distant honey, the vapor of rare flowers.
Taste came with smell - the taste of blood on her tongue. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, to localize where the blood was coming from; but she couldn't. Instead, the attempt only brought the recognition of new pains - in her head, in her neck, in her back. She started to move her arms again, but this entailed a whole catalogue of new pains; so once again, she rested.
Next she allowed temperature to waft into her sensorium. Sun warmed the fingers of her right hand, while the palm, in shadow, stayed cool. A breeze drafted the back of her legs. Her left hand, pressed against the skin of her belly, was warm.
She felt…awake.
Slowly - reticent actually to witness the damage, since seeing things made them real, and seeing her own broken body was not a reality that she wanted to acknowledge - slowly, she opened her eyes. Things were blurry here at ground level. Hazy browns and grays in the foreground, becoming progressively brighter and greener in the distance. Slowly, things came into focus.
Slowly, she saw the Flag.
A strange, small creature, she stood three feet from Amanda's face and no more than three feet tall. She had large, curious, bluish eyes, and nimble little fingers. With auburn hair swirling to her waist, she looked like nothing so much as the plastic Barbie dolls Amanda remembered playing with as a child. In fact, when she first saw the creature standing before her, she thought it merely a dream, a childhood memory rising out of her addled brain.
But this wasn't a dream. It was a Flag. And her name was Kelsie.
Nor was she exclusively cute - for as Amanda focused further, she could see a knife strapped to her waist. It was all she wore, save for a thin animal-skin dress.
They watched each other, unmoving, for a long minute. The Flag seemed puzzled by the princess; uncertain of what she was, or what she intended. At the moment, Amanda intended to see if she could sit up. She sat up, with a groan.
The sound apparently frightened the tiny thing; she rapidly stumbled backward, tripped, and fell. "Eeeeep!" she squeaked.
Amanda scrutinized herself closely, looking for signs of serious damage. Her clothes were torn; she had cuts, bruises, and scrapes everywhere - but nothing seemed to be broken or irreparable. On the other hand, she had no idea where she was. She groaned again.
That did it for the Flag. She jumped up, grabbed a four-foot-long spear, and held it defensively in her direction. Warily, she circled, poking the pointed javelin at her, clearly more fearful than aggressive.
"Cut it out!" Amanda brushed the weapon away with annoyance. That was all she needed now - to be skewered by a Barbie Doll. More gently, she added: "I'm not going to hurt you."
Gingerly, she stood up, testing her legs. The Flag backed away with caution. Her legs were a little unsteady, but she was able to walk slowly over to the charred remains of the speeder, now lying in a half-melted pile at the base of the partially blackened tree.
Her movement was away from the Flag, who, like a skittish puppy, took this as a safe sign and followed her to the wreckage. Amanda picked the Woodwind scout's laser trumpet up off the ground; it was all that was left of him.
"I think I got off at the right time," she muttered.
The Flag appraised the scene with her big, shiny eyes, nodded, shook her head, and squeaked vociferously for several seconds.
Amanda looked all around her at the dense forest, then sat down, with a sigh, on a fallen log. She was at eyelevel with the Flag now, and they once again regarded each other, a little bewildered, a little concerned. "Well, looks like I'm stuck here," she confided. "Trouble is, I don't know where here is."
She put her head in her hands, partly to mull over the situation, partly to rub some of the soreness from her temples. Kelsie sat down beside her and mimicked her posture exactly - head in hands, elbows on knees - then let out a little sympathetic Flag sigh.
Amanda laughed appreciatively and scratched the small creature's head. She purred like a kitten.
"You wouldn't happen to have a comlink on you by any chance?" Big joke - but she hoped maybe talking about it would give her an idea. The Flag blinked a few times - but she only gave her a mystified look. Amanda smiled. "No, I guess not. You're a jittery little thing, aren't you."
Suddenly Kelsie froze; her ears twitched, and she sniffed the air. She tilted her head in an attitude of keen attention.
"What is it?" Amanda whispered. Something was obviously amiss. Then she heard it: a quiet snap in the bushes beyond, a tentative rustling.
All at once the Flag let out a loud, terrified screech. Amanda drew her trumpet, jumping behind the log; Kelsie scurried beside her and squeezed under it. A long silence followed. Tense, uncertain, Amanda trained her senses on the near underbrush, ready to fight.
For all her readiness, she hadn't expected the laser bolt to come from where it did - high, off to the right. It exploded in front of the log with a shower of light and pine needles. She returned the fire quickly - two short blasts - then just as quickly sensed something behind her. Slowly she swiveled, to find a Woodwind scout standing over her, his weapon leveled at her head. He reached his hand out for the trumpet she held.
"I'll take that," he ordered.
Without warning, a small hand came out from under the log and jabbed the scout in the leg with a knife. The man howled in pain and began jumping about on one foot.
Amanda dove for his fallen laser trumpet. She rolled, fired, and hit the scout squarely in the chest, flash-burning his heart.
Quickly the forest was quiet once more, the noise and light swallowed up as if they had never been. Amanda lay still where she was, panting softly, waiting for another attack. None came.
Kelsie poked her head up from under the log, and looked around. "Eeep rrp scrp ooooh," she mumbled in a tone of awe.
Amanda hopped up, ran all about the area, crouched, turned her head from side to side. It seemed safe for the time being. She motioned to her wily knew friend. "Come on, we'd better get out of here."
As they moved into the thick flora, Kelsie took the lead. Amanda was unsure at first, but she shrieked urgently at her and tugged her sleeve. So she relinquished control to the odd little creature and followed her.
She cast her mind adrift for a while, letting her feet carry her nimbly along among the gargantuan trees. She was struck, suddenly, not by the smallness of the Flag who guided her, but by her own smallness next to these trees. They were ten thousand years old, some of them, and tall beyond sight. They were temples to the life-force she championed; they reached out to the rest of the universe. She felt herself part of their greatness, but also dwarfed by it.
And lonely. She felt lonely here, in this forest of giants. All her life she'd lived among giants of her own people: her mother, the great Senator Organa; her father, then Minister of Education; her peers and friends, giants all…
But these trees. They were like mighty exclamation points, announcing their own preeminence. They were here! They were older than time! They would be here long after Amanda was gone, after the Brass, after the Woodwinds…
And then she didn't feel lonely anymore, but felt a part again, of these magnificent, poised beings. A part of them across time, and space, connected by the vibrant, vital force, of which…
It was confusing. A part, and apart. She couldn't grasp it. She felt large and small, brave and timid. She felt like a tiny, creative spark, dancing about in the fires of life…dancing behind a furtive, midget doll, who kept beckoning her deeper into the woods.
It was this, then, that the Brass were fighting to preserve - small creatures in mammoth forests helping scared, brave princesses to safety. Amanda wished her parents were alive, so she could tell them.
XxX
Lord Fred stepped out of the elevator and stood at the entrance to the throne room. The light-cables hummed on either side of the shaft, casting an eerie glow on the royal guards who waited there. He marched resolutely down the walkway, up the stairs, and paused subserviently behind the throne. He knelt, motionless,
Almost immediately, he heard the Empress' voice. "I told you to remain on the command case."
Fred rose, as the throne swiveled around, and the Empress faced him.
They made eye contact from light years and a soul's breath away. Across that abyss, Fred responded. "A small Brass force has penetrated the shield and landed in Goshen."
"Yes, I know." There was no hint of surprise in her voice; rather, fulfillment.
Fred noted this, then went on. "My son is with them."
The Empress' brow furrowed less than a millimeter. Her voice remained cool, unruffled, slightly curious. "Are you sure?"
"I have felt him." It was almost a taunt. He knew the Empress was frightened of young Skywalker, afraid of his power. Only together could Fred and the Empress hope to pull the Trombone Knight over to the dark side.
"Strange, that I have not," she murmured, her eyes becoming slits. They both knew the Drill wasn't all-powerful - and no one was infallible with its use. It had everything to do with awareness, with vision. Certainly, Fred and his son were more closely linked than was the Empress with young Skywalker - but, in addition, the Empress was now aware of a crosscurrent she hadn't read before, a buckle in the Drill she couldn't quite understand. "I wonder if your feelings on this matter are clear, Lord Fred."
"They are clear, My Mistress." He knew his son's presence, it galled him and fueled him and lured him and howled in a voice of its own.
"Then you must go to the Sanctuary System and wait for him," Empress Faulder said simply. As long as things were clear, things were clear.
"He will come to me?" Fred asked skeptically. This was not what he felt. He felt drawn.
"I have foreseen it," the Empress assured him. It must be of his own free will, else all was lost. A spirit could not be coerced into corruption, it had to be seduced. It had to participate actively. It had to crave. Chris Skywalker knew these things, and still he circled the black fire, like a cat. Destinies could never be read with absolute certainty - but Skywalker would come, that was clear. "His compassion for you will be his undoing." Compassion had always been the weak belly of the Trombones, and forever would be. It was the ultimate vulnerability. The Empress had none. "He will come to you, and then you will bring him before me."
Fred bowed low. "As you wish."
With casual malice, the Empress dismissed the Dark Lord. With grim anticipation, Fred strode out of the throne room, to board the shuttle for Goshen.
XxX