The governor snorts. "He is." He holds up a finger and loops it in a lasso gesture. "Bring me the captive, Odair."

His attache goes away and returns shortly with a short cage on grav-pads. Odair nudges it along with his knee-the cage is too short for a human. It's an iron kennel meant for one of Lozen's strega-a blunt-beaked harrier bird. Big as a dog and a powerful hunter. Trainable, too. With the right...motivation. But this cage contains no such bird.

Rather, it contains a man.

This man belongs here. His eyes are wild like the forests of this place. He is rangy and savage-an undomesticated cur.

The Imperial stoops to look. His face tightens as he sees. "This one, he's missing an eye."

"We loosened that eye thinking it would loosen his tongue." Lozen growls mucus up out of his throat and into his mouth and chews on it. "It did not." He spits the phlegm against the ground: spat.

"Well. Your methods are your own. I could use a tour of your..."

Just then, someone hands something to Odair. A holoscreen. Odair's gaze flits to the Imperial, then to the screen, then to Lozen.

"Governor, you should see this."

Odair sidles over and hands him the holoscreen.

On the screen: a series of WANTED posters. This, he realizes, is the team of Imperial hunters that is plaguing him and his domain. He sees the man that is kept in the cage: a commando, looks like. Jom Barell is his name.

Thing is, he recognizes another face on there, too.

Sinjir Rath Velus.

It is the face of the Imperial in front of him. Oh, sure, the man has endeavored to change a little about himself: hair a bit longer, and not to mention that overgroomed caterpillar crawling on his upper lip.

But that, without a doubt, is not Jorrin Turnbull. (If such a man even exists.) He is an intruder. He is prey.

Lozen feels his blood go hot. What a wondrous reversal: This man thought he could hunt the governor, but now this fool has gotten himself caught in a bind. And he senses it, too. Some prey is too dumb to know, but the best prey-the kind you want to hunt for the challenge it presents-can sense when the wind has changed, when a predator stalks the wild.

The man tenses-his gaze flits because he's looking for a weapon or an exit or any advantage he can manage.

But he's too slow.

Lozen has a knife in his hand: a kishakk blade. A Wookiee weapon; the name translates roughly to "bramble thorn." The beasts use them for eating-they pry open the shells of various crustaceans and bugs. But Lozen has found the blades to be elegantly balanced. So balanced, in fact...

He throws it. The traitor turns to flee- The blade lands true. It sticks in the back of the man's calf, crippling his leg. His prey-Sinjir whatever-his-name-is-falls forward, catching himself with open palms. His foe howls like a wounded dyr.

"Bring him to me," Lozen barks to Odair.

His attache complies.

- Burned bone chimes tink and tonk in the unstill air. As Jas sets up her rifle, snapping the scope on, one of the crew behind her-Greybok, the one-armed Wookiee-bumps something and it rolls past her.

A toy. A child's toy. It's a wooden saurian with wheels instead of legs, and as it rolls, its jaw squeaks open and closed.

She wonders how long it's been since a Wookiee youngling has played with it. That youngling might now be older. Or dead.

A shadow falls over her. Chewbacca stands, staring out into the mist. He looks up, too. Like he's equal parts sad and afraid.

He chuffs and barks.

Solo hunkers down next to her. "We'll keep our eyes peeled."

"What'd he say?" she asks him.

"You don't wanna know."

She screws the thermal imaging module onto the side of the scope. "I'm a big girl. I can handle it."

"He said to watch out for spiders."

"Spiders don't frighten me." She thinks: They sure frighten Sinjir, though. Even a teeny-tiny house spider running across the floor will have him freeze in place, saying a prayer to a hundred gods he doesn't believe in. It occurs to her suddenly: She misses Sinjir.

Solo leans in. "Spiders don't frighten you because most spiders are no bigger than your hand. These spiders, webweavers? Big as you and me."

"That's horrifying."

"What's more horrifying is what they do to you."

She blinks. "You're right. I don't want to know."

"The Wookiees eat 'em. Chewie says they're, well, chewy."

Chewie yips in agreement.

Just the same, she looks over her shoulder, half expecting to see some massive scuttling thing coming up fast. But all she sees back there is the Halo and the team they brought on board: a ragtag crew of battle-hardened Wookiee refugees, plus a smattering of smugglers. That includes two of Greybok's friends: Hatchet and Palabar. It's Palabar who helped them conceive of this plan. The Quarren is utter poodoo in a fight-even the whisper of threat leaves him cowering and praying. But he's tech-savvy and smart when he can see past his own fear.

The crew is doing what they're supposed to-anchoring massive eyebolts into the wood with pneumo-hammers. The wood resists, but the Wookiees know the weak spots. Once the eyebolts are in, they start threading through the jump-cables. Everything is going according to plan.

Her mind drifts back to Sinjir...and Jom, and she feels suddenly less relaxed. But there's no time for that distraction. Everyone has to do their part.

Her, included.

Jas leans in and tucks the scope against her eye.

It's comfortable. Sitting behind a gun is always comfortable for her. That probably says something unhealthy about her, but she doesn't care.

Solo flips the thermal imaging switch. "Thanks," she says, as the dead mist below suddenly flares with colors and contours.

There: Camp Sardo. Far below. The shape of a lumbering thing roams into view-an AT-AT walker slowly stomping along the perimeter. From up here, she can't even feel the vibrations of its feet, that's how high they are.

She sees the great blob of life down there: Wookiees and forest troopers and the officers who belong to Lozen Tolruck's demonic regime.

"You see it?" Solo asks.

"Not yet."

"Here, gimme the rifle."

"I have it," she whispers. "Patience, Solo."

He yanks back his hand as if bitten. "Hey, all right, all right. But put a little thrust in it, willya?" He looks up at Chewie. "How we doing, Chewie?"

Chewbacca rumbles a reply.

"Inhibitor frequency is still up," Solo says. "But it could be down any minute. C'mon, Emari. Find the damn-"

"I found it," she says.

The shield generator gives off its own heat signature. And it's one of the taller structures in Camp Sardo-a dodecahedral tower on four steel posts. It controls the field that surrounds the camp: a field that Imperials can pass through without harm, but any chip that passes through it will detonate. Meaning, if a Wookiee waltzes through the field-boom. Unfortunately, it's an entirely separate mechanism from the inhibitor frequency.

Which means it has to go separately.

But it can't go too early-they blow that field too early, and they'll set off alarms. That could compromise their plan.

"I hope your pair can handle this," Solo growls.

"Sinjir has it handled."

"The commando, your boy toy there, he wasn't supposed to get captured."

She hesitates. I hope he's all right. "He also saved our hides and let us get away from that ambush. A fact I hope you appreciate."

"Yeah, yeah." He shifts impatiently. "And that explosive slug of yours will take that whole thing down? You sure about that?"

"It will," she growls through clamped teeth.

"Longer we sit up here, the bigger the target on our backs."

She gives him a look. "You need to trust us."

"Yeah, yeah, relax. I trust Sinjir. I'm just on edge. And I...trust you enough to take the shot when the frequency goes dead."

"Me?" She smirks. "I thought you were Mister Crackshot around here. The scoundrel with the luck of the Force on his side."

"Here, how about this? We tell the world that I'm a better shot with a blaster, and you're a better shot with a rifle. We'll call it a draw."

She nods, says "That's fair."

She likes Solo, after all this. Even with his boyish impatience. He gives off a vibe that floats somewhere between a sharp-tongued cad and a dim-witted oaf, but at the end of the day, there's something genuinely good about him. She likes to hope he sees the same in her.

"All right," he says. "Stay frosty, just in case we-"

The mist around them lights up with a single laser spearing the air.

"-get company," he finishes, and then pivots on his heel with one blaster already up and in his hand. He yells to Jas: "Stay here with Chewie. Get ready for the shot! We'll hold 'em off!"

Coming up out of the mist behind them-and above, and below them-forest troopers in camouflaged armor. Everything lights up with the exchange of blasterfire, and Jas hunkers down, jaw tight, trying not to die.

- Jom Barell is in his cage. His one eye, gone. And the men responsible are out there right now, about ready to kill Sinjir Rath Velus.

He didn't recognize his crewmate at first. Having one eye didn't help, but Sinjir disappeared into the role of some needy bureaucrat. Tolruck bought it, too. That ex-Imperial is good at his job.

Jom Barell appreciates those who are good at their jobs.

Right now, though, Sinjir is also about to be good at getting his hind end handed to him by Lozen Tolruck's brute, Odair. Jom bangs against the cage, growling like an animal, his voice like two stones grinding together. "Get up! Get up, Rath Velus, you bloody sack of meat!"

Odair advances- Sinjir moves fast, rolling over and pinwheeling a kick with his good leg. Odair doesn't see it coming; the kick knocks him down to the ground.

Others gather around-men of Tolruck's with mud on their cheeks and callused hands, women with leering stares hungry for violence. Fights erupt here in the fortress from time to time. Sometimes they even make Jom fight-usually with one hand tied behind his back because even half blind he still put his attackers in the dirt. All around, Tolruck's people hoot and call with the atavistic urgings of a primitive species.

The two men scrap. Odair crashes an elbow against Sinjir's collarbone. But Sinjir bends back and fetches the blade from his own leg-it squishes and squirts a line of blood as he claims the knife as his own. It's an opportunity, though, and Odair takes it, dropping a fist into his foe's gut-again and again it falls like the head of a hammer, wham, wham.

It goes on like this for a while. The two men pummeling each other. The knife passing between them, the blade never drawing any more blood. Tolruck watches with eagerness, picking his teeth with a chipped thumbnail. Jom watches Tolruck. He thinks, Soon as I'm out of here, you're a dead man, Tolruck. He's dreamed of taking the man's eye as vengeance for his own. When he was captured, the crew had been running the same two-prong approach that they started that day with the command station on the other side of Kashyyyk: Jom and his ground team did their commando recon business, in this case trying to secure a shuttle platform in order to grab an Imperial ride that would get them safely out to Tolruck's island. But they were ambushed-turns out, they'd pulled the same trick too many times and gotten cozy with it. So did the local Imperials. Jom's team of Wookiees got away, but he wasn't so lucky. They captured him and brought him here.

And that's where they cut out his eye.

Suddenly, Tolruck applauds-Jom looks and sees Odair finally get behind Sinjir. The brute pulls his arm tight around Rath Velus's throat. Eyes bulge. Tongue wags. C'mon, Sinjir. Give 'em hell. Fight. Fight!

The knife drops from the Sinjir's hand and clatters to the ground.

And with that, it's done.

The crowd cheers. Jom slumps against the cage. His one chance at freedom, over. They shouldn't have sent Sinjir.

Odair spits out a pair of teeth, then drags the ex-Imperial over by his heel. Panting, he says: "Here he is, Governor."

Sinjir rolls over. Jom winces; the man's a bloody, bruise-dark mess. The side of his face is swelling up like a balloon. His nose might be broken, and blood spackles that twisted mustache.

Sinjir licks his lips. "I'll be fine in a second. Then we can go for-" He grimaces and grunts. "Round two."

Tolruck lords over him, scratching his belly. "Why would you come here? Into the heart of it. Into my lair. Do you think me prey?"

"Not at all. Just looking to borrow a cup of sugar, love."

"You came for your friend, then. The one-eyed man."

"No, not that, either. Actually, I came for your-" Here he coughs so hard it sounds like he might shatter a rib doing it. "Your control module."

A lantern of hope alights inside Jom's chest.

At that, Tolruck barks laughter. The control module is how they program and control the chips in each of the Wookiees. It controls literally hundreds of thousands of chips. Jom's seen it. It's old tech, practically Clone Wars era. Tolruck probably barely understands how it works.

"You idiot. I would never have let you get near that, no matter who you claimed to be. The control module remains in my control only."

"And yet-" More coughing. "It doesn't."