Published: June 24th 2023, 2:35:23 pm
Flying on the Xanadu was infinitely more comfortable now.
Now that its interior had been properly designed by Temple engineers to support Jedi having to travel long distances in secrecy with its cloaking device. It had enough onboard consumables to support four people for a month. There were two rear passenger seats just behind the pilot and co-pilot seats which could collapse into reasonably comfortable single beds. Behind those were a WC on the starboard side and a tiny kitchenette on the port side. The only concession to comfort was in the center of the living space on the Xanadu - a raised meditation bench as you’d find in many rooms in the Jedi Temple.
All in all, the whole thing now felt like a cozy camper van; if one that was capable of traveling about 347 light years in an hour and respectably armed to take on any standard fighter in the galaxy.
It was also nice that both Anakin and I were traveling together as master and padawan, without the worry of a thousand other things related to running the Resolute and commanding the 501st getting in the way. It was only in these moments that I understood how the war had actually robbed both of us of the usual dynamic and daily life of a Jedi Master and padawan traveling the galaxy, going on adventures, righting the wrongs of the galaxy, following the will of the Force, stopping evildoers, getting called by the Jedi Council then hanging up on them, etcetera, etcetera.
Okay, that last one didn’t happen, but he had been ignoring their calls and I struggled mightily to keep a straight face as Anakin had a holocall with the Council explaining why he had commandeered the Xanadu without so much as a by-your-leave or explanation. Yes, they had ordered him to solve the Ziro the Hutt problem, but not to use the Xanadu.
The Council was still rather leery of cloaking devices. So far, the CIS had been content only to use cloaks on a handful of occasions in support of special operations and guerilla actions. The Republic and GAR had done the same, but it wasn’t seeing widespread use, mostly because of its cost. If the Jedi then began using it routinely… that somehow crossed some line in their minds. ‘Jedi should not skulk about invisibly in the shadows.’
What rot. That thinking is what saw the Jedi Shadows become nearly extinct in the Order and it was one of the primary reasons the galaxy was in this mess in the first place.
Thankfully, Yoda and the moderates on the Council, neatly reigned in the orthodox hardliners, giving Anakin only the equivalent of a slap on the wrist at the end of the day.
“So why steal it, master?”
Anakin flipped a few switches, secured the holocom system and sat back in the pilot’s chair.
“I knew if I asked it would take at least a day or even two before I’d get permission, that was time that I also knew I couldn’t afford to waste. My own foresight was clear on that.”
That made me feel rather satisfied. Expanding Anakin’s repertoire to not just be a straight forward Jedi Guardian who approached problems with a lightsaber and the odd bit of TK. He was the kriffing Chosen One for crying out loud and to keep him ignorant of the deeper mysteries and skills in the Force was a downright criminal waste of potential. It was dangerous as well, because there was no telling what feats Palpatine could pull out of his Sith bag of tricks and if Anakin remained ignorant to those avenues of attack, then disaster would result.
Our days aboard the Xanadu soon fell into a comfortable routine.
We made turns in sleeping for five hours at a stretch, but didn’t even bother trying to sync our body clocks with Nar Shaddaa time. The moon and its parent planet Nal Hutta, had a rotation of 87 standard hours and those living there slept a length of time their biology supported. The hutts barely kept cognizant of Galactic Standard Time. They moved, worked and played on their own time.
We made turns to prepare breakfast, lunch or supper.
The rest of the time we’d be training in the subtler arts of the Force, since we lacked the space to smack each other with lightsabers.
This was mostly to do with the Alter Mind disciplines and saw me teaching Anakin what I’d been taught by Kina Ha.
By the time we reached Zeltros on the Trellen Trade Route three days later, he had Force Perception to a point where he was successfully fooling my own mind into not seeing that he was there at all. Of course, I had my defenses down to simulate a normal unguarded mind. The next trick was to see if he could do that to an alert mind, someone who was paying attention or suspicious.
As a result of this, he was monopolizing the meditation platform quite a bit, but I didn’t mind.
I still had a ton of work to do; command studies, ‘Force’ studies, keeping up to date on my Fulcrum network, Kina’s latest lesson that she was sending me in a distance learning format, Clan Vizsla affairs, reading the latest correspondence from Lira Blissex at Kuat, Mistress Gray from Hapes, Riyo Chuchi and so on.
Lira’s letter was especially interesting as it included rough concept designs of what would be the first ‘Bastion’-class remote shield recharge ships. The name ‘Bastion’ wasn’t even final yet, but it’s what she was campaigning for the class to be named.
They were currently conceived as falling into a light cruiser tonnage, just over five hundred meters in length and were essentially huge banks of shield generators, squeezed into a scaled down wedge-shaped hull that it would share in common with its Venator big brother. It didn’t have a bridge tower, but it was raised a little bit off the main hull, giving it a much sleeker profile. Its engine power to mass ratio was crazy, making it blisteringly fast and able to zip around the battlespace to get where it needed to go in a hurry.
The current argument among the design group was whether or not to give it any weaponry.
One side argued that it would detract from its intended purpose in the battlespace, every erg of power wasted in weapons, was power that wasn’t going to recharging shields. It was a waste of space on the hull. That it should never need to shoot. The other side argued that there had to be at least some anti-fighter or missile defenses. Yes, the Bastion would have monstrously powerful shields for its own defense, but you couldn’t just rely on such a passive defense in this era of space warfare.
My own reply that I sent back to Lira was that the latter side had a point, but so did the former camp.
In an ideal scenario, whenever a Bastion was targeted, all the other Bastions would dump shield recharges on their fleetmate. A smart enemy would soon realize that if he spread his targets to the entire Bastion wing, making each call for shield recharge, then it would lead to confusion and a reduction in efficiency and strength. A Bastion needed to at least look after itself in a torpedo heavy battlespace. Then I pointed her in the direction of the fighter scale, rotary type blaster cannon that was mounted on the Xanadu.
It wouldn’t make the camps in the design group happy, but it at least reflected practical reality in the battlespaces. The Bastions should also add to AA coverage in a fleet, not leech off it, nor should they be hugging the Venators in close formation.
As Anakin predicted, our fuel level got to a low level just as we dropped out of hyperspace in the Kashyyyk system. Neither he nor I were comfortable flying onward to Randon on fumes so we diverted course to land and refuel on Kashyyyk itself.
The homeworld of the wookiees was another strange one for the galactic registers.
From space it was just an agglomeration of every hue of green you could imagine, with banks of white clouds gathering and rotating out from the polar regions. The oceans between the four major continents were green. It had no axial tilt and a perfectly circular orbit, therefore only experienced one continuous season of high heat, humidity and rain. The planet was mostly just filled with the gigantic wroshyr tree forests as a result but it did have a small amount of desert areas in the rain-shadow of the small mountain ranges that it had. It also featured a beautiful tropical ocean belt that contained archipelagos and coral reefs that was like the Great Barrier Reef of old Earth on steroids.
Not that I ever wanted to go diving to see it, as the ecology of Kashyyyk was often politely referred to as a ‘layered death trap’.
The wookiees lived on the uppermost level of the planet; among the canopies, branches and boughs of the giant trees, which were strong enough to easily support buildings made from modern materials. Naturally, the wookiees didn’t build like that and only used indigenous materials wherever possible.
The Xanadu was given clearance to land in the wookiee capital of Rwookrrorro, which was a true ‘city in the trees’ if I’d ever seen one. Even the landing pad we used was a circular flat structure, made of duracrete supplemented with natural local fibers, nestled on what was considered a minor branch of a wroshyr tree.
Walking outside was like getting slapped in the face with a hot tropical humidity.
My eyes and senses through the Force were picking up on the sheer abundance and concentration of life on this world. Flying overhead were agr, red colored birds of prey looking for their next meal. A few hundred meters away on another platform, was a bunch of Kashyyyk bantha being tended to by their farmer. The insect life was also abundant and already I had to TK away a handful of mosquito equivalents that were the size of my thumb.
Of course, the most plentiful sight was the wookiees themselves, who had a population all over the planet of roughly 45 million. This didn’t seem like a lot, but when you considered how space was at a premium among the upper level and the wookiees at minimum reached 2 meters in height for females and males generally reached 2.2, long lifespans of 400 years on average, then population density had to be carefully managed. It was something they had been doing for thousands of years successfully. Their ascent into a spacefaring race had caused their numbers to also increase greatly offworld.
We were met by a wookiee male by the name of Grawda. He towered over us at 2.1 meters and had body fur that was a mix of brown and white, with golden, very intelligent eyes gazing down on us. He only wore a harness over his chest that contained an abundance of datapads, tools and even a bowcaster slung on his back.
Anakin did the talking and naturally he could understand Shyriiwook with no issues, even if he couldn’t speak it. Grawda, being the ‘dockmaster’ equivalent of the starship landing platforms of this part of the city, dealt with all kinds of aliens and didn’t mind being spoken to in Basic.
I did my best to pretend to listen to the conversation, and the only way I could even understand what was going on was to piggyback off Anakin’s mind through the bond.
Getting a full refuel was apparently going to be quite expensive, to the point where Anakin was trying to haggle to lower the cost.
He usually didn’t care about credits and our operating budget for this mission was quite substantial given where we were heading and our overall objective.
‘They’ve been having trouble refining starship fuel apparently,’ Anakin thought to me.
‘Why?’
He had a slight argument with the wookiee at this point, it happened so quickly that I couldn’t really make heads or tails of what was going on. I just knew at some point Grawda pointed at the lightsabers hanging from our belts. Anakin nodded and confirmed that yes, we were Jedi. More back and forth, before finally he explained.
‘It seems that the primary refinery that serves the starport’s fuel bunkers has been shut down. That’s the reason for the price hike.’
‘Is it that expensive? Would it gobble up all our liquid funds?’ Which was ridiculous, a sanctioned mission like this had 20,000 credits that was allocated to a Jedi Master for operating expenses. It was enough, in theory, to at least buy a small to light hyper capable ship in an emergency, with enough left over for fuel, food and other expenses.
‘No, of course not. However, the price is suspiciously high, it’s triple the current galactic standard rate, which is already inflated because of the war. Grawda further explained the shutdown was because the Seekers did so… that’s the wookiee’s law enforcement branch.’
I saw Grawda giving me and Anakin a look and he growled-moaned something in Shyriiwook.
‘Well, it seems the wookiee sense of smell and their intelligence is not exaggerated at all, he’s picked up that you’re injured in some way.’
I shrugged, ‘Might as well then.’
Grawda listened for a moment, nodded then gave a reply.
‘He says most wookiees with such a disability would banish themselves to the Shadowlands, to spare the tribe the trouble and resources of taking care of them,’ Anakin conveyed.
‘Tell him it's only temporary and ask why the Seekers have shut down the refinery.’
Anakin nodded and did so. Grawda seemed to huff and gave a short answer.
The answer shocked Anakin somewhat. ‘A murder, a wookiee worker was killed by their shift supervisor.’
‘That is always a tragedy, Skyguy, but why do you feel so shocked? It’s life, it happens.’
‘The supervisor in this case, is human.’
My brain screeched to a halt. ‘Human?’
‘There are humans who live here as immigrants, Snips,’ Anakin pointed out.
‘Oh, but… okay, so the human probably surprised the wookiee, or was armed when his victim wasn’t… sorry, Skyguy, I can’t resist a mystery.’
‘No problem, Snips,’ he smirked at me briefly and resumed speaking to Grawda.
The big wookiee eventually nodded, pulling out one of his datapads, whilst Anakin handed over the physical cred chips for the transaction. With that done, Grawda bowed his head slightly at us both and walked off the landing platform.
‘Well, I managed to grab us a 5% discount thanks to the fact that we’re Jedi of Master Yoda’s Order.’
‘Really?’ I vaguely recalled that Yoda had a long standing friendship with the wookiees as a whole. What basis that deep friendship had was not really explored at all.
‘Yes, anyway, we should be refueled within the hour. In the meantime, we could go exploring a bit or just stay put in the ship. This humidity is a bit crazy.’
I didn’t mind the humidity so much, it was the insane insect life that I objected to, as I had to throw a minor Force Push to swat away another small group of them.
To go or stay?
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My curiosity won the day and the realization that as I was in the middle of fighting a war, that my chances to visit the home planet of Chewbacca again would be very minimal as long as it raged. Not to mention the other complications of such long term thinking.
So Anakin led the way into the treetop city of Rwookrrorro.
As befitting the capital city of the planet, it was the largest, home to roughly half a million wookiees spread out over a vast surface area. Wookiees for all that they liked to live in tribes that generally supported each other, clearly needed their space. It was rare that we would be moving across a walkway between wroshyr trees and have to mind where we were going. The most wookiees I saw in a group together were five and they were clearly debating something rather vigorously judging from the emotions I sensed from them.
Like most other planets with a spaceport, not even the wookiees were immune to putting shops and tourist traps around it to snap up visiting spacers and travelers. From food, drink, gifts, toys, souvenirs and there was even a fashion shop.
I couldn’t help myself and went inside.
Wookiees were technically all ‘naturists’ and only wore things for functionality related to their profession mostly. There were exceptions, as their harnesses that they wore over their upper bodies could be very decorative and elaborate, which in some cases doubled into outright armor. The shop mostly sold such decorative harnesses sized down to general humanoid proportions. It also featured offworld fashion, but made from local, natural materials.
The shop proprietress was a rather pretty human woman, slightly taller than me, and she wore a nice airy green knee length dress that looked like it came from the shop.
She greeted me with a professional friendly smile and I just smiled in response, pointed to my montrals, shook my head and jerked a thumb at Anakin, who was only now walking in the shop. I decided to be less spooky in this encounter and began signing to Anakin.
‘Please tell her, I’m sorry I couldn’t hear her greeting and I wanted to know if that is actually armor that wookiees wear?’ I pointed to a large manakin that had an elaborate wroshyr wood armor harness.
Anakin looked at it with sudden interest and fascination before asking. The proprietress replied and I felt his astonishment at the answer.
‘It seems that when properly cut and treated, wroshyr wood can be strong and flexible enough to be used as starship hulls, though you’d still need deflectors for particle shielding at high speeds. Her name is Ves Kartinn, by the way, sounds Corellian.’ Anakin answered.
My mind boggled for a moment, as I signed rapidly, ‘Do the wookiees have wooden starships?’
Kartinn smiled and nodded, beginning a brief explanation, eventually Anakin signed, ‘Yes, though they’re considered luxury curiosities, not serious starships that can do work in space. Only the Wookiee Royal Families have them. Pleasure ships, in other words. They can even travel in hyper, though they don’t leave the Kashyyyk system in them, as if something were to go wrong, fixing the hull would be an issue.’
I thanked her with a bow and on a whim decided to browse and shop for a best equivalent of a ‘summer dress’ that was made from wroshyr fibers. I ended up getting a dress in a sky blue color that ended just above my knees and it breathed just right for the local climate.
Just as we were getting done with the transaction, I felt a spike of emotional rage outside the shop. Ves whirled to look outside and an exasperated look crossed her face.
When I looked to see what was going on, I only saw two towering wookiee males; a brown one and a mixed white and brown wookiee furiously growling at each other just outside the shop.
Both were stomping the walkway under their feet and elaborately posturing with their arms. It was also attracting a small crowd of more wookiees, males and females, who began spectating and even occasionally joining in the argument.
‘What’s going on?’ I signed to Anakin.
He kept a wary eye on the arguing wookiees and asked Ves. She shook her head, leaned on her shop counter and began speaking. This explanation took a while as there was clearly some context that needed to be given first.
‘That is an argument that’s gotten serious enough to become public, wookiees are generally peaceful until their anger is roused, even then they have strict rules and traditions about how it can be expressed. Those two are arguing about the murder that happened at the refinery. The brown wookiee is arguing to let the Seekers do their job, but the brown and white one is advocating for the guilty human ‘madclaw’ to just be banished to Shadowlands immediately, including arguing that all the humans should just be banished offworld permanently to stop this from happening again.’
I could vaguely recall ‘madclaw’ was a significant label to attach to someone in wookiee society. Something about how a wookiee’s claws, which were used to help them climb Kashyyyk’s trees and flora, should never be used in combat. Any wookiee who did were labeled madclaw and banished to the lowest levels or Shadowlands of the planet. Even most ardent die-hard naturist wookiees never ventured below what was considered the ‘third level’ of the ecology, with most wookiees living on the upper seventh level. The Shadowlands was the ground floor - the place where exiled wookiees were sent to die and where Revan had to travel to find the Rakatan Atlas to find the ancient Star Forge.
The argument continued and it was hard to even judge visually or through their emotions how it was progressing or which side the crowd was approving of.
Anakin shrugged eventually, ‘It’s happening so fast, my Shyriiwook isn’t that good, only a native can keep up with that.’ He asked Ves something, she shook her head and spoke. ‘She’s lived here for ten years, can even speak the language for short bursts, but certain words are beyond human vocal chords. As best she can tell, the crowd is favoring the brown wookiee, who’s also making the most rational arguments.’
This didn’t enthuse the other side of the argument, who’s temper flared even higher and pushed his opponent.
Immediately, the crowd’s general roaring stopped and they backed off to form a large circle.
The brown wookiee immediately realized what had just been acknowledged and invoked. He growled with frustration and walked into the center of the newly created combat circle. I mentally dubbed him Mr. Sagan.
The white and brown wookiee, who I mentally dubbed Mr. Xeno, eagerly approached and fell into a wookiee version of a combat stance.
Anakin put a hand on my shoulder, giving me a hard look. ‘Do not interfere. Ves says this is normal, things won’t go lethal. Neither have weapons and any side stupid enough to use their claws deserves the Shadowlands.’
The fight that followed was inelegant and brutal. Wookiees didn’t seem to have any sense of a martial art or they never bothered inventing one. Mind, when you were that big it made little sense to bother.
Sagan and Xeno took turns to charge into each other then laid into each other with massive fists that produced such impact that I swore I could feel it through my lungs.
Unlike in a human equivalent, the crowd watching did so in absolute silence.
I even asked Ves through Anakin why this was.
‘The crowd is usually a big part in why an argument gets to this level. The aggressor got angry that the crowd wasn’t on his side, so he escalated the fight. The wookiees won’t cheer now because they all want this to be resolved and to de-escalate. It’s not in their nature to be like this, they’re mostly gentle and benevolent as a rule.’
The fight continued for six rounds of seemingly bone crushing punches, until finally Sagan shook his head and refused to continue, conceding the victory to Xeno.
Far from settling anything, Xeno just grew disgusted by the concession and stormed out of the fighting circle.
Sagan left, visibly wincing and limping.
‘Well, he might have won the battle, but he still lost the crowd,’ Ves said. ‘Rather clever of the brownie to concede like that.’
Anakin asked her, ‘What do you think about the murder?’
‘Let’s just say I hope the Seekers get to the bottom of it quickly. What you just saw is not the first ritual combat argument. I’ve heard that dozens have broken out so far all over the city ever since it was announced, all over the same issue. If this isn’t sorted out properly and soon, the Royal Families might ask King Grakchawwaa for a lockdown of off-worlders to preserve the peace and to close the starport.’
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We returned to the Xanadu an hour and a half later, having walked our fill of the touristy spots around the spaceport, buying a few more trinkets to mark our visit to the planet of the wookiees.
The one thing that had surprised me and shouldn’t have, was the fact that we had found a curio toy shop that sold very fluffy, very huggable plush toys, shaped roughly like wookiees. They came in all sizes and the shop even had a novelty one on display that was life sized. It was all just too adorable to resist and I had bought one that fit in my lap. Naturally, every customer in that shop was an off-worlder and the owner was a large wookiee that had a relatively ‘young’ feel to him in the Force, who was entirely bemused at the reactions around him.
I didn’t know whether he considered his shop a serious endeavor for making money or just something to do for a font of endless amusement - as if he was meme-ing on the off-worlders.
It was probably both.
We found our ship refueled and with someone waiting for us.
It was a wookiee female, with a glistening brown tint to her fur and wearing a curious, yet very official looking bandoleer and belt combination. She was also armed with a traditional looking sheathed blade at her hip and a bowcaster slung on her back.
She greeted us in Shyriiwook and bowed.
Anakin and I politely returned it and he began speaking to her, whilst he signed the conversation to me.
‘This is Umnunoo, she is an official Seeker of the Wookiee tribes. She heard of our presence.’
‘That gossip travels faster than light among the wookiees is not surprising,’ I signed, whilst keeping my smile even.
‘She’s asking whether she might impose on our time and aid in a quest for the truth.’
‘Let me guess, the murder?’
Anakin and Umnunoo talked back and forth, until he finally signed. ‘Yes. There’s apparently aspects to this case where she believes a Jedi would be just the ticket to cracking it wide open.’
Oh, this was just so typical. The Force was once again meddling.
‘Master, we have a critical mission already,’ I signed with a resigned air.
He wagged a forefinger at me. ‘You feel it just as I do, Snips. We have been asked for help, officially. To refuse at this point would go against the reputation of the Jedi. Besides, I sense this won’t take that long. Master Sinube will inform us if Ziro’s situation changes.’
It helped that the Force would certainly be throwing a hissy fit if we couldn’t afford this delay and a brief probe with Prescience agreed.
‘Fine, but I’m getting in M8 and letting her do the translating. Besides, I think her sensors will also come in handy.’
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Fully armored up and with helmet on so the HUD could display M8’s rolling translation of the speaking going on around me, we left with Umnunoo in a four person speeder.
She gunned it to blistering speed of over four hundred kph and headed into a south-easterly direction straight for the nearby coast and the wookiee city of Palsaang in the Wawaat Archipelago.
The speeder had a full coverage air shield and she had no trouble briefing us on the case.
“The suspect’s name is Rec Marsal.” The phrase flashed on my HUD after Umnunoo spoke. “Human immigrant, been living here for ten years and been working in the Palsaang Refinery for all that time. He was actively recruited for his chemical engineering expertise and the Palsaang Family offered him a lucrative deal. His contract was only for five years, but he was offered an extension and he accepted. In my own interview with him, it seems he also grew to enjoy the life here on Kashyyyk and just a few years ago was accepted as a full immigrant by the Royal government.”
“Not exactly the profile of a murderer so far,” Anakin said. “He’d definitely know by now how wookiee culture deals with this.”
Umnunoo growled and nodded. “Yes, so far, all the physical evidence points to a crime of fury or as humans say, passion.”
“What’s his relationship to the victim?”
“He was the supervisor of the shift, the victim, she was his subordinate. Everyone I interviewed said they got along normally, as expected of a boss and someone who reported to him in a working environment.”
“How was the murder accomplished?”
“Blaster pistol that belonged to the suspect, she was shot from the front, straight through where the wookiee heart is.”
“You still have the weapon?”
“It’s locked up and guarded by two of my best at the refinery. The crime scene itself is also locked down. The suspect is also kept there for the moment.”
Anakin frowned and studied the wookiee Seeker, “How much pressure are you under to get this done quickly?”
“A lot,” she growled in muted anger. “The Palsaang Family especially are impatient and are pressuring the king to order me to throw Marsal into the Shadowlands.”
“Forgive me, I’m not that well versed in wookiee culture, but can he do that?”
“He can, but doesn’t want to. Tradition affords Seekers great power to arrive at the truth. If he interfered with that, it would undermine his rule in the eyes of the people.”
“So that’s why you also requested our aid?”
“Yes, and Marsal is… he is hiding something. His attitude is resignation to his death in the Shadowlands. He offers no defense and is speaking no further. Perhaps you Jedi can see what I can’t and get through to him.”
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We landed in front of the Palsaang Refinery forty minutes later.
It was set on a foundation a stone’s throw from the beach facing the nearby ocean. A multitude of thick heavy pipes ranged out from the structure and dipped directly into the rolling waves. The refinery building itself was tall, gray and ominous in design. It definitely wasn’t built by wookiees, who preferred organic shapes wherever possible. The workers themselves lived in dwellings built on the smaller wroshyr trees here on the coastline.
“Crime scene first or do you want to talk to Marsal?” Umnunoo asked.
“Let’s look at the evidence first,” Anakin answered.
The Seeker led the way into the refinery via a large blast door that rose up at her approach. There we were met by a number of other wookiees who were also wearing bandolier and belt, which seemed to signify that they were Seekers as well. They thumped their fists against their chests at Umnunoo’s approach, a greeting which she returned by only using one fist.
The industrial interior of the refinery was one of naked durasteel, walkways, machinery and had a distinct air of age, despite being in seemingly perfect working order. There were condensers in use that I knew had last been state-of-the-art just under a century ago. The computers and interface panels were at least a generation old.
Most engineers would look at the place and be amazed it was still running smoothly, but it was a testament to the wookiee’s intelligence, ingenuity and working with what they had.
Umnunoo had no problems navigating us through the veritable maze of corridors, until we arrived at what was the crime scene.
It was guarded by two very big wookiees, also Seekers, one with a drawn bowcaster and the other with a naked blade that was a dagger by their standards, but would be a sword to smaller species. They opened the doors by fiddling with a control panel and it hissed open into the durasteel wall recesses.
Beyond was a gigantic room filled with huge tanks, piping, pumps, and control screens mounted directly into the walls and the machinery. Umnunoo walked forward through it all and stopped three-quarters of the way in, beside a large tank that stretched from floor to ceiling. She gestured to the floor.
“Here.”
She stepped to the side to fiddle with a large portable holoprojector that was standing on a long tripod. It burst into life and projected the body of the murdered female wookiee that lay awkwardly crumpled with folded legs and on her back, simply staring into the ceiling with dead golden eyes.
“The actual body?” Anakin enquired delicately.
“In the possession of the Seeker who specializes in such things. I already have his report. Tradition demands it returns to the family within the next two days.”
“And he found nothing odd or anything to contradict the current ‘crime of fury’ theory?”
“No. She died due to a precise shot from a blaster at close range.”
“So she knew her attacker and had no reason to suspect she was in danger, she was surprised, didn’t have time to flee or fight back. No DNA or cell traces from Marsal on her hands, fur or claws?”
“None,” Umnunoo confirmed.
I raised my left hand towards the place where the victim had fallen. M8 knew what that meant, and began using her hi-res scanners on the floor. I moved my hand around in a circle, widening the scan until it compromised a full ten meter diameter.
My HUD flashed the imaging results. The floor here was hardened duracrete, but the place naturally accumulated dust. Combined with the humidity and how recent this was, M8 scans managed to draw a pretty detailed map of footprints. It was naturally a mess given how many worked in this plant, but M8 filtered for the age of the footprints, running analysis in a way only a droid who was generally used in archeology could.
“What is the estimated time of the murder? How long ago?” I signed.
“Roughly 49 hours, it occurred during the night, when the refinery was closed,” Umnunoo answered after M8 used her own voice to speak for me.
“Does it not operate constantly?”
“No, only thirteen hours a day, seven hours are scheduled for maintenance afterward, the remaining six hours of the day it’s closed.”
“Any surveillance sensors in here?”
“Yes, if something goes wrong, the engineers here want to know why. Unfortunately, the sensors seem to have been turned off for the night in question and only turned on again when the next day’s shift reported for work. That’s not standard procedure. It’s the first thing that led me to believe that there’s more going on here. If this was a crime of fury, then Marsal wouldn’t even think to bother.”
“Humans can hold onto hot anger for a long time, Umnunoo,” Anakin pointed out. “We’re more than capable of keeping our wits about us whilst in anger, it depends on the individual. It’s entirely possible Marsal was angered by the victim in some way, then he could roughly plan her murder.”
She shook her shaggy braided head. “That doesn’t fit with my interview and assessment of him.”
“How well was this crime scene preserved?” I asked.
“Hriddu, the refinery manager, was the one who discovered the body. He says that he locked the room down immediately. No one besides him came within touching distance of the body.”
“M8’s scans show the presence of three wookiees and a human at roughly the time in question,” I revealed. “Assuming one is Hriddu, the second is the victim’s footprints, the human is Marsal, then it means we have a third unknown wookiee that walked where the body had fallen.”
Umnunoo looked around in confusion, “You have a droid here?”
“M8 is a repurposed explorer droid that is part of my armor, her analysis programs for archeology are quite useful in this case.”
M8 then spoke up for herself in Shyriiwook, introducing herself. Umnunoo seemed quite impressed and intrigued if her body language and sense in the Force was anything to go by.
“Are you certain of this M8?” Umnunoo asked.
“93% Seeker Umnunoo,” M8 replied with a ‘chirpy’ voice, a fact which she saw fit to display on my HUD.
“Can we see the weapon?” Anakin asked.
Umnunoo nodded and touched a part of her bandoleer, which was revealed to be a cunningly hidden comlink, as she called another Seeker to bring down the weapon.
Barely a few minutes later another big wookiee entered carrying a rugged steel briefcase with flaky green paint. It beeped and a small screen on its side flashed the moment it was handed over to Umnunoo. She thanked and dismissed her fellow Seeker before tapping in a code into the briefcase, then put it on the floor and folded it open.
“A BlasTech DC-16, civilian version,” Anakin said as he knelt down next to the case, examining it closely and wisely not picking it up even with his gloved right hand. “Made for a humanoid hand, and has 49 shots out of 50 remaining in its power cell. Umnunoo, how well would a wookiee handle this gun?”
In answer she pushed away the fur from her own hand, revealing a very big, dark skinned, four fingered hand with an opposable thumb, “Awkwardly, but usable.”
“Trace scans?”
“We found only human skin cells matching Marsal, it’s his weapon, the blaster wound and scorch pattern matches one produced by such a weapon. His right hand also scanned positive for residual tibanna gas venting. He fired that weapon during the time frame of the murder.”
“Where was this weapon found?”
“In his office, desk drawer,” she pointed to one side of the large space where a cubicle office sat in the corner.
I was starting to see why Umnunoo felt frustrated. You would think Marsal would try to dispose of the weapon. There was even a handy ocean nearby to throw it in and the Seeker’s would’ve never found it. Yet he shoots the victim, walks back to his office, and puts the blaster right back in his desk.
“How did you even come to suspect Marsal in the first place?” I asked.
“Standard scans of this room, we picked up the tibanna signature and the energy source of that blaster from his office. When I first questioned him, it wasn’t long before he confessed to the murder.”
“So you even have a confession, yet you’re still not wrapping up this case?” Anakin asked with an impressed look at Umnunoo.
“I abide by my oath as seeker, Jedi Skywalker. This is Kashyyyk.”
Her body language and how she spoke Shyriiwook showed her feelings on the matter, and she was a blaze of repressed fury at the thought that she would ever just close a case for expediency.
He raised his hands wearily, “Apologies, didn’t mean to imply that you would, Seeker Umnunoo.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, her fury fading. “No, I apologize. You are visitors, guests and would not know.”
Anakin stood and patted down his legs for dust, “I think it’s time we had a chat with Marsal. See if he doesn’t know anything about this mysterious third wookiee.”
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He was being kept in a room in the administrative wing of the refinery on the upper floors. It had been a bare bones office with a single desk, a computer terminal, chair and a very small window that overlooked the trees, beach and ocean. That was all pushed to the side and Marsal sat miserably on a single chair in the center of the room. A Seeker was in the room with him, patiently standing in front of the window, guarding the man.
He didn’t even look up when we entered, simply staring at the floor between his legs.
Umnunoo grunted something that M8 couldn’t translate, the guard left and closed the door behind him.
By appearances alone, Marsal was a thirty something man, black curly hair, blue eyes and a rounded face. He didn’t have the look of an active person, working only with his mind and rarely with his hands, though I did spot old calluses on them. His semi-formal clothing of black, white and grays, with a stylish tunic and pants, would be at home in any professional setting on Hosnian or Coruscant.
In the Force, he was a cloud of misery, sadness and hopeless depression. I sensed no guilt or remorse, but there was a slight undercurrent of anger that simmered beneath everything, it also had a nuance to it.
“Are you feeling this, Skyguy?” I thought over the bond.
“Yes, I get the same. I’m beginning to see Umnunoo’s point.”
“That nuance of anger… what is it?”
“That my padawan, is righteous anger, something you feel when someone or something has hurt or killed someone very close to you.”
A feeling Anakin would be very familiar with.
I stood to the side, leaning against the wall and Anakin stopped directly in front of Marsal, almost invading the man’s personal space. That managed to generate a reaction at least. He flinched a bit, sat straight and leaned backwards, meeting Anakin’s eyes with alarm.
“Yes, what… who… who are you?”
Marsal scanned the room frantically, taking in my own presence and Umnunoo, who was patiently standing next to me now.
“I am Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, over there is my Padawan, Ahsoka Tano. Seeker Umnunoo has asked us to look into the matter of the murder of… sorry, what was her name?”
“Peuru,” Umnunoo said.
“Peuru, thank you.” Marsal’s reaction to the name of his victim was interesting as was the feeling of indignation. It was as if he felt that Anakin… no, everybody should know that name. Then he felt astonished that of all things, actual Jedi would be here. “So tell me, why kill her?”
He looked at Anakin and it was like a screen had closed over his eyes, he shook his head. “I refuse to answer. I’ve given my confession to Seeker Umnunoo, the physical evidence is there. That is enough.”
Anakin clicked his tongue and folded his arms, “That’s not going to work, Marsal. You don’t need to talk for a Jedi to interrogate you. I’m going to recite the chain of events as we understand them, both my padawan and I will be picking up on your every emotional reaction and surface thought, picking it apart for inconsistency. It’ll be difficult, but we will get to the truth eventually. So why don’t you save us all a lot of time and tell us the actual truth. Tell us about the other wookiee who was with you.”
The fear that suffused Marsal at the mere mention of that mysterious wookiee was extremely potent. He kept his face well controlled, but his eyes widened before he could get it under control.
Marsal pursed his lips and shook his head.
“The hard way it is then. Tell me why you were meeting Peuru late that night.” The Force flexed and twisted as Anakin wove a sudden Mind Trick on the man. Marsal opened his mouth to answer automatically, his eyes briefly glazing over, before his will resurfaced and his teeth clacked together as he resisted admirably.
“What… what was that?” He blinked rapidly. “What did you do to me?”
“You have a strong will and mind, Marsal. Good for you, but it still won’t help. Umnunoo told me that you wanted to go over a change to the maintenance schedule with Peuru after the shift was over. That was how you got her alone in the tanker room.” Marsal’s reactions, emotions and involuntary thoughts; that all rang as truth to this mind. “Did you actually discuss the maintenance schedule?”
Marsal didn’t answer and mightily tried to avoid any emotional reaction, but to a non-Jedi, it was like telling someone to not think about something, but cognitive response absolutely ensured that you would think about it, even as you frantically told yourself to not think.
‘I’m getting a big no, there, master,’ I thought to Anakin.
He nodded, “Of course, you didn’t discuss it. You were too busy killing her.”
“I did kill her,” Marsal blurted out desperately.
I frowned in confusion, ‘Master, why does that register as truth?’
‘Context, Snips, context. Pay attention carefully now.’ Anakin frowned at Marsal visibly. “You truly believe that.”
“Yes! Yes, I do. I did it.”
“You desperately want me to accept that.”
“Yes!”
Anakin leaned over, staring deep into Marsal’s eyes. “Did you pull the trigger?”
“Yes!”
That was a lie. So how does someone believe they had killed, but didn’t actually commit the act?
Anakin stepped back and said a single word softly, “Peuru.”
The result of the name, when uttered without context or anything else to react to, shocked me… Marsal felt sorrow, sadness and it all came from… love.
He had loved Peuru.
Now I was not a person who would throw stones about interspecies romance and I didn’t even want to think about the mechanics. We also didn’t know if it was a one-sided affair from Marsal that Peuru didn’t return.
“Did she share your feelings?” Anakin asked pointedly.
The poor man tried to bury it with anger, but the amazing answer was, yes Peuru felt the same way. Just like that it all clicked in my mind, the puzzle pieces aligning.
I signed and M8 spoke, “Someone found out, didn’t they?”
Marsal glared at me, yet there was fear in his eyes.
Umnunoo shook her shaggy head, “Skywalker, Tano, are you suggesting that Peuru and Marsal were in a physical relationship? That’s…” She trailed off as if not believing her own ears.
“Has that not happened since the Royal Families allowed human immigration?” I signed, before M8 boomed the translation to Shyriiwook.
“There are some… rumors of it happening, but that’s all it is. The biological differences are just too great. No sane human or wookiee…” She trailed off when she saw that now Marsal was openly glaring at her.
“Interspecies relationship aside,” Anakin said, shaking his head. “It would clearly be enough of a potential societal scandal that when someone found out, they tried to use it as blackmail.”
Marsal sat back in his chair and stared at his own hands, I could feel it the moment he gave up. “Yes, somehow Urroch found out. I don’t know how… we were both so careful.”
“Who is Urroch?” Anakin asked.
Umnunoo leaned forward with suspicion in her eyes. “Urroch of the Palsaang?” Marsal nodded with resignation. She literally growled enough that M8 felt it should be indicated on my HUD. I could also feel that she was not liking the potential implications. She explained, “Urroch is a middle son of the Palsaang Royal Family. He’s rich thanks to his family, wants more of it and has a reputation just short of being a madclaw. He’s run afoul of the Seekers on multiple occasions, but his family always gets him out of it.”
Well, not all wookiees could be Chewbacca, I guess.
“So he tried to blackmail both of you and something went wrong enough that your blaster came into the picture and Peuru got shot in the struggle?” Anakin theorized.
Marsal shook his head, “It’s worse than that, Master Jedi. Urroch is as xenophobic as they come. He couldn’t conceive that any female wookiee would love a puny, weak human. I don’t know what he aimed to extort from us both, maybe money but things didn’t get that far in our ‘conversation’, but he certainly came prepared. He was wearing an isolation suit, so that he wouldn’t accidentally leave hair behind that could be traced. He looked ridiculous in it and I couldn’t help but laugh.”
Imagining a fully dressed wookiee like that did somewhat tickle the funny bone.
“He didn’t appreciate that?”
Marsal snorted, “Of course not, he flew into a rage about it. It’s only with hindsight that I think he was counting on that. He attacked me and I had brought along my blaster just in case, I pulled it out to defend myself but couldn’t aim or pull the trigger in time. He easily wrestled it away from me and simply pushed me to the floor and kept his foot on my chest. Peuru wanted to intervene but she immediately understood the threat Urroch was making - one stomp of his foot would kill me. She pleaded with him to stop, that’s she’d do anything.”
He closed his eyes and I felt the sheer pain, heartache and ever present righteous anger simmering in the background.
“Urroch was disgusted by that,” Marsal continued when he had mastered himself. “Said that Peuru wasn’t a wookiee anymore, that she had been corrupted by me… then he simply aimed the blaster and fired. She just… just crumpled… she was always so strong, tall, so full of life… and just like that,” he flicked a finger, “she was gone. I’d never seen anyone die before… and for it to be her… why? Just… why?” He asked in desperation, which turned to anger and he started to smash his fists into his own legs. “Why?!”
I felt Anakin’s empathy for the man surge, he stepped forward and put hand on Marsal’s shoulder. “I wish I could answer that in a way that would take away your pain, but it wont. This is something you will carry for the rest of your life. Only time and perhaps the love of family and others will heal the wound, but the scar remains.”
“Time and family, I have neither. I came to Kashyyyk to escape what my life had become on Corellia…” Marsal shook his head, unwilling to further speak on that topic.
“What happened next?” I signed.
“Urroch knew he had to clean up after himself, so he replaced the power pack from a spare I had, had me shoot it once through an open window so I would get residue on me and told me exactly what my story should be, that I must confess to the Seekers and be banished to the Shadowlands.”
A long silence followed as everyone digested his story.
Finally, Umnunoo stepped forward, “Jedi Skywalker, Padawan Tano, did you find any lie in Rec Marsal’s testimony here?”
“It’s the truth as he knows it,” I signed.
“He speaks the truth,” Anakin affirmed.
“It will be much simpler for all of us, Seeker Umnunoo, if you just send me to the Shadowlands,” Marsal whispered. “You still need some evidence to at least convince your fellow Seekers before you can bring this before the king.”
“Evidence I will find,” she growled in determination. “I will start by looking for that isolation suit, the actual power pack used in the murder, and look more closely into why the surveillance sensors were down. That when combined with a sworn holo recording from two Jedi, will be enough to get that madclaw to answer for his crimes before the king himself!”
“If Urroch is clever he’ll have destroyed and ‘lost’ all that, he wouldn’t keep it,” Anakin pointed out.
“Maybe, maybe not, I know Urroch’s type. There’ll be something he’ll want to keep as a memento or something to mark this ‘achievement’. If nothing else, I can trace who made the isolation suit in that madclaw’s size, that is custom work, not mass manufactured.”
“Why wouldn’t it be mass manufactured? What about when wookiees have to do work in hazardous environments?” I asked.
“We’re a rather large species and relatively few in number, Padawan Tano. One of the reasons we allowed immigration onto Kashyyyk was for maintenance and jobs in small tight spaces. Those of us who work in such environments are too few to justify a whole factory just to make a hazard suit, our space suits are also custom. Now… I want to thank you both for helping, but I need to get started on this.”
Anakin smiled ruefully, “You’re welcome and this is where you tell us politely to be on our way.”
Umnunoo chuckled, “After leaving your sworn testimony, of course. I’ll also ask for your contact details, Jedi Skywalker. You might be needed to make a holo appearance in the future before the king in this matter.”
“As my padawan likes to say, that’ll certainly be interesting.”
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The Xanadu plunged into hyperspace and began the final three day leg of the journey to Nar Shaddaa.
I sat back in the pilot seat, going over the cloaking device checklist and couldn’t help but feel…
‘It sometimes happens, Snips,’ Anakin thought from his position on the mediation bench. ‘Not everything we do ends with lightsabers flashing and a criminal being caught in some desperate struggle against time with disaster looming. Sometimes our job is as simple as what we just did, to help the truth come out. Our jurisdiction on Kashyyyk is limited to what the wookiees allow, they are non-aligned at the moment.’
‘Rather surprising that is still the case, considering what happened in the first month of the war, you were involved in that, weren’t you?’
‘The Battle of Alaris, the primary moon of Kashyyyk, yes. You read that report?’
‘Considering it was fought over multiple fronts and involved an ancient Sith weapon that could literally harvest life energy, it did indeed capture my interest, Skyguy.’
It was a weapon dating back all the way to the Great Hyperspace War some five thousand years ago that Dooku had rediscovered or had been told of by his master. It was literally a technological version of what Emperor Vitiate had been able to do through ritual, absorb all life then use it to whatever purpose necessary. In this case, a relatively small saucer shaped ship barely a hundred meters in diameter, that could annihilate fleets and armies with exotic energies that ignored shielding. The Sith gave it the utterly predictable name of Dark Reaper.
‘So all that desperate fighting, a Republic victory and a whole village of wookiees dead, and it wasn’t enough for King Grakchawwaa?’
‘It’s the death of the village which cemented the king’s decision. Wookiees don’t have a large population, Snips, they can’t afford to fight a war of this scale and they don’t want to fight at all if they can help it.’
Something I knew which would change in the next few years. The reason for which I couldn’t intuit or remember at the moment, but given the nature of wookiees it wasn’t hard to deduce a probable cause. Sooner or later, someone close to the king would die directly at the hands of the CIS and drive them onto the Republic’s side.
Why would the CIS even bother with the wookiees in the first place?
The old reason was always how valuable the wookiees were as technically competent slaves and laborers with a multi-century lifespan.
However, a little known fact was that the wookiees had access to numerous, secret hyperspace lane routes. Routes which had been mapped over centuries by the Claatuvac Guild; a secretive group of wookiee cartographers, hyperspace scouts and navigators. That was all that was known even to the Jedi. Those secret routes would be just the ticket for the CIS to undermine a lot of defensive planning in the east and north-east of the galaxy.
So far, the CIS hadn’t pushed that hard to obtain the data, but it was undoubtedly on their to-do list. Just as it was undoubtedly on Republic Intelligence’s list of tasks to head off any clandestine robbery attempt by the CIS.
Kashyyyk’s strategic position on the Trellen Trade Route and the first hurdle to jump before you could hit the Republic world of Umbara was another factor.
I put down the datapad with finality. ‘Enough turu-gathering, you need to master Force Perception to at least my level before we hit Nar Shaddaa, Skyguy. You don’t want me to have to babysit you through this mission do you?’
He gave me a wry look, ‘No, master.’
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A/N: A small detour on Kashyyyk. I looked at the nav routes to Nar Shaddaa and the chapter just wrote itself from there. Hope you enjoyed, have a great weekend.