From the top of the creaking building rose a towering structure made of open metal latticework—a lookout tower or a corroded communications relay, Lowie guessed. Its peak rose more than a hundred meters above the top of the building, level with the distant rim of the crater. Wind whistled through the rusted girders.
Lowie’s heart raced at the sheer height of the structure. Without hesitation, Raaba sprang onto the latticework and began to climb.
Needing no encouragement, Lowie followed suit.
“Master Lowbacca, do be careful,” Em Teedee scolded. “Do I need to remind you that you are injured? You shouldn’t be exerting yourself in such a fashion.”
Exhilarated at being with Raaba, though, Lowie ignored the pain in his side, careful not to tear loose the graft bandage. Soon he drew even with Raaba as they climbed higher and higher, where their Wookiee instincts told them they would be safe and protected.
After a few minutes he prompted Raaba to continue her story where she had left off.
The feigned death had been a liberating experience for Raaba.
Once she had decided that her family would be better off thinking her dead than a failure, a giddy feeling had come over her. If she was truly “dead,” she had nothing left to lose. She could start over, become a new person.
She had pressed her supply pack against her stomach to stanch the flow of blood from the injuries the katarn had inflicted.
Then, knowing she would travel more easily without it, she left her pack behind as a decoy, in hopes that the bloodstained pack would draw away some of the voracious predators already on her trail. She concentrated only on climbing, climbing, increasing the distance between herself and danger. At the same time, she distanced herself mentally from her home, her friends, everything she had known.
Now, as they climbed the open framework of the rickety tower, Raaba looked over to check the graft bandage covering Lowie’s injury from the combat arachnids.
Perhaps, Lowie thought, it reminded her of the wound that—as far as her loved ones knew—had cost her her life….
Finally, during that long nighttime ordeal, weak from loss of blood, Raaba had made her way to the hangar platforms on the outskirts of the Wookiee tree city and stowed away on a Talz freighter.
The Talz first mate who found her, tended her wounds, and listened to her story, told Raaba that he knew of someone who could help her in her plight. He had been as good as his word.
The furry white pilot and first mate had taken her directly to Nolaa Tarkona and invited her to join their burgeoning new political movement, the Diversity Alliance.
Lowie absorbed the name of Nolaa Tarkona with great interest. It seemed that the charismatic leaders name came up in conversation more and more frequently, yet he knew little about the Twi’lek woman.
The two Wookiees finally reached the top of the tower and perched themselves comfortably on the creaking metal latticework, letting their feet dangle. Lowie relaxed into the sense of peace and safety he always felt when he was up high, as high as the tops of the wroshyr trees on Kashyyyk.
His ribs still stung, but he ignored the pain.
Raaba touched Lowie’s arm and pointed to a feathered avian that swooped and dove around the tower, snatching irides cent flying insects from the air. Then she continued with her story.
The compassionate, visionary Twi’lek woman, Nolaa Tarkona, had frightened Raaba at first. Her lone twitching head-tail and stern features intimidated the young Wookiee. But Nolaa had asked nothing of her and had seen to it that Raaba had the best of medical attention.
When Raaba was fully recovered, the Twi’lek had offered her a place to stay, a ship of her own, intensive pilot training, and a job flying for the Diversity Alliance and helping to spread the word about the idealistic new movement. The opportunity was everything Raaba had hoped for, and she gratefully accepted. She came to admire Nolaa Tarkona, to identify with her fiery enthusiasm, her single-minded pursuit of her goals.
Day by day Raaba learned more about the atrocities that humans, whether in service to an empire or a republic, inflicted on the alien species of the galaxy—all alien species. As Lowie listened uneasily, Raaba described many examples of the torture or enslavement of aliens by humans. She explained how Nolaa Tarkona believed that by banding together, the nonhuman races could put a stop to such practices and protect themselves. In their unity, in their diversity, lay their strength against the oppressors.
Nodding his shaggy head, Lowie agreed that it did sound like a worthy cause, to help the many downtrodden species recover from the damage inflicted by the prejudiced and evil Emperor. He and his friends, Jacen, Jaina, and Tenel Ka had often banded together to fight for an important cause or against a common enemy, he told Raaba, and they had always been stronger together.
Flashing him a dubious look, Raaba pointed out that humans could not always be trusted, and that deception came in many forms.
The remark hurt. Lowie trusted his friends as much as he had always trusted Raaba and Sirra. Brushing down the dark streak of fur over his eyebrow, he asked mildly if letting friends think you were dead—letting them spend months mourning you and grieving for you—was one of the forms that deception came in.
Raaba groaned at the rebuke, admitting in a pained growl that she had been unfair to Lowie and Sirra and to her own family.
She had been reluctant to go back to Kashyyyk, however, until she had made something of herself, something she could be proud of. She wanted to return home successful and triumphant, a Wookiee hero.
She refused to be seen as a coward who could not finish what she set out to do.
Now, with her work for the Diversity Alliance, she felt proud of who she had become, and things were changing.
Then her voice sank almost to a whisper and she apologized for leaving Lowie, for all the pain she had caused him.
Lowie nodded mutely and traced a finger along the trimmed fur at Raaba’s wrist and knee. He thought of his sister Sirra and how she, too, still felt the pain of a lost friend. He couldn’t wait to bring Raaba back home. It would be a fine celebration.
Far below, a pair of avians chased each other through the rusted latticework and darted out the other side. Almost as if she could read his thoughts, Raaba turned her hand palm-upward to grasp Lowie’s and assured him that she would no longer hide behind a lie. She had important work to do, important work for the Diversity Alliance, and that required her to stop hiding.
Lowie wondered what Nolaa Tarkona had said to Raaba that could possibly command such devotion.
15
The world of Chroma Zed boasted the most spectacular amphitheater facilities Nolaa Tarkona had ever seen.
A broad balcony served as a speaking platform, the absolute center of attention halfway down a sheer cliff face. The balcony podium was bracketed on either side by a bifurcated waterfall—two streams of rushing water that slithered down the cliff to join again in a churning pool far below.
Cold, damp spray surrounded the platform, reeking of chemicals.
Nolaa would have found the water undrinkable, had she been inclined to try it; so contaminated was the water with natural petroleum from oil seeps, bubbling black pools near the source of the river, that the tumbling falls were coated with a sheen of oil.
Huddled in cliffside galleries, the gathered Chromans watched and listened. Tossing her writhing head-tail over her shoulder, Nolaa scanned the thousands of faces perhaps tens of thousands—that poked out, while the remainder of the Chromans’ bodies hid in the shadows.
They were wormlike humanoids with smooth heads, smooth skin, and webbed hands. They burrowed into mountainsides and chose homes near trickling water to keep themselves perpetually moist. Their eyes were huge and round, their mouths lipless and quivering.