He frowns. "You are a sad, delusional little man."

"Probably. But not about this, I'm afraid." Sinjir sits up. One eye now is sealed shut behind a tomb of swollen flesh. "See, you checked me for weapons at the door, but you did not check my boots. I've got a hyperwave transceiver spike hidden in my heel-and, so sorry, your precious console is of the transmitting variety. Totally wireless. An old security flaw, but one that remains mostly uncorrected across the Empire. I should know."

"You...you didn't...you couldn't have..."

"I didn't need to be at the console to hack it. I just needed to be near it. Oh, of course, I also needed enough time for the remote hack to work. Which, I think you've given me enough just...about...now."

The datapad in Tolruck's left hand begins to flash red.

The alarm.

Now it's Jom's turn to bellow with laughter. He bangs his heels against the cage, cackling madly.

To Odair, Tolruck screams, "Kill the intruder. Kill him!"

- A laser lances through the air and Jas hears it hit flesh-bazzt!-and next to her, one of the Wookiees, Harrgun, topples off the platform. His body tumbles down into the mist, massive tree-trunk arms pinwheeling.

Every centimeter of Jas wants to get up and take the fight to the troopers. They're surrounded now on damn near every side-they've got troopers behind them. And a LAIT-a low-altitude Imperial transport-keeps making flybys, the troopers within firing on them as they pass. On the latest pass, Chewie takes aim with a bowcaster and the air sizzles as he clips one of the forest troopers right in the visor. The visor shatters and the body rolls out of the transport, falling through the air and joining Harrgun in death.

But Jas can't get up. She has her shot lined up.

All she needs is- Chewie roars.

The inhibitor frequency is dead.

The chips are off planetwide.

The revolt begins here and now with the pull of her trigger.

Her finger twitches and the slugthrower bucks against her shoulder.

Bang.

Above Camp Sardo, a thunderclap explosion. Fire rains down in streams and bits of the shield generator slam against the ground, crushing troopers underneath. Metal burns. Smoke rises. Around old Awrathakka, the mist pulses with what looks like red lightning.

The shield is down.

All around, Wookiees climb the towers, crawling on top of buildings, swarming over their troopers. A trio of them offer thunderous roars as they wrench a turret out of its mooring. Not far away, two Wookiees grab for one of the forest trooper guards-each takes an end and they twist. The trooper's spine snaps as his body corkscrews.

They rage. Fur and fangs and swiping limbs. Men screaming. In the distance, something explodes. Fire jets into the air.

The beasts ululate.

- They are free. Fire blooms like a flower in the mist as the shield generator goes down. Around Jas, the Wookiees roar and raise their arms and weapons in triumph-a small moment of victory before the next phase begins.

Already Han is clipping himself onto one of the cables. He throws an anchor line to Chewie, who loops the cable around him and hooks it into his belt.

"You good?" Han says to Jas-flinching as a laser bolt cooks the air behind his head. He growls and returns fire. A trooper scream cuts through the mist and she sees a shape fall.

"I'm good."

"We're almost there," he says, his hand on her shoulder. "See you on the other side of this, Emari."

"Good working with you, Solo."

To Chewie, he says: "C'mon, pal. Let's go steal us an Imperial walker." Then he and Chewbacca take a running leap off the platform.

Vzzzzzz!

The two figures disappear over the edge.

And then the other Wookiees join them. One by one they leap bodily off the end of the platform, arms and legs splayed out as they dive through the mist toward the vile Camp Sardo. Cables trailing like umbilical cords.

That leaves her with her command crew: Greybok, Hatchet, and Palabar. Three ex-prisoners from Sevarcos who joined Solo's mission on a fluke-Hatchet claims he doesn't want to be here, keeps saying things like, I wanted to get away from prison planets, not take a vacation on one, but then Greybok silences him with violent, one-armed shaking. Palabar mostly just quivers and peeks out from behind his hands.

They're the dregs of this team. Good thing Jas likes the dregs.

Already, they're waving her toward the Halo. A pair of forest troopers comes up a long spiraling ramp-one is already on her, so she cracks him hard enough with the butt of her gun that his helmet spins. The other gets a point-blank shot to the chest plate. It splits in half and he goes down, his armor shattered and smoldering as he twitches.

Hatchet waves her onto the Halo.

"This is all going too good," he says. "It's gonna balance out the other way, Zabrak, just you watch. Can't go nice forever."

"Shut up and man the guns," she tells him, then hops in the Halo and kicks the thrusters into gear. They thunder to life and the ship lifts into the air. Time to go rescue her friends.

- Everything is pulsing like a pounding heart. Sinjir gags as the man's hands wrap around his throat. Tolruck's attache glares down with bloodshot eyes, a mad grin spreading across his face like a pool of spilling oil set aflame. Sinjir's hand swats uselessly at the man, then paws along the ground, feeling for the knife-a knife he knows can't be too far away.

There. He has it-his fingers tickling the base of the hilt, and as darkness sucks at the edges of his vision he tries to pull it close, closer...

A miscalculation. It spins out of his reach.

Then, a shadow falls over him. Death, he decides. It is the specter of the end coming to claim him.

He has part of it right. It is death, yes.

But it hasn't come for him.

One of the Wookiees brings the flat end of a circular saw-blade against the side of Odair's head. Whonnnng. Odair cries out and tumbles to the side. The Wookiee takes one stride, straddling the man.

Then he flings the saw-blade to the side and reaches to grab the man's arms. The freed slave begins to pull, pull, pull- Odair screams. Then comes the sound like branches breaking.

It is a sound that fails to disturb him, for he knows its ilk well. The sounds of pain were once his song.

No time to think about that now.

Now: It is time to move.

He scrambles onto his hands and knees, only now regarding the chaos around him: Troopers are storming onto the scene, firing blasters. But the Wookiees, now freed, are not easily cowed by that-they roar and rage and rush Tolruck's men. A trooper flies through the air over Sinjir's head, arms pinwheeling as he hits the log walls with a dull crunch.

The knife. Sinjir's hand finds it, and he finally gets back onto his feet-unsteadily, for his entire body feels like it's been passed through the gastrointestinal tract of a gundark-and he dives toward Jom's cage.

He uses the knife to pick the lock.

Jom, for his part, watches silently. Chest heaving.

A moment of sympathy plucks at Sinjir's strings-the man really is missing an eye. His left. And it was removed without elegance. The socket is just a ragged pucker, a crass asterisk of ill-stitched skin. No signs of infection, at least. That's something.

The lock springs. The cage pops open.

Barell grunts. "I don't feel so good."

"You don't look so good, either. If you take my meaning." Sinjir winks and points to one of his eyes.

"Are you drunk?"

"Regrettably, no."

It's like something clicks in Jom's head. He grabs Sinjir by the arm and pulls him forward. "Come on, Rath Velus. Let's go find Tolruck and make him eat that knife."

"No," Sinjir says. "We have to go, Jom. Jas is coming." Or she should be. If everything else is going according to plan...

The commando pulls him close even as violence unfolds around them. "That man? He took my eye, Sinjir. Cut it out of my head while he was...high as a wind turbine, drunk on some kind of tree sap. Then? He threw my eye into a campfire. I heard it pop and sizzle. He has to pay for all his crimes. The ones against me. The ones against these Wookiees."

"You're angry."

"I have gone beyond the margins of angry."

Sinjir looks around. Tolruck is nowhere to be found. The deranged governor has fled the scene. Sinjir knows how this works-Jom will go and do this no matter what he says.

The question now is whether or not Sinjir will join him.

And that, of course, is no question at all. Debts must be paid.

"Tolruck awaits," Sinjir says, grimacing. "Shall we?"

- It's like a giant thermal detonator primed and gone pop- Beneath the Halo, Jas sees that freedom has come to Kashyyyk. Wookiees, immediately free of the inhibitor field that suppressed their minds from the chips embedded in the backs of their heads, are raging. They scale the towers of Camp Sardo. They rip at tents. They swarm over AT-ST chicken walkers, tipping them over so they crash against the ground. The forest troopers flee as Wookiees claim blasters, mount turrets, and begin to overwhelm their captors. They outnumber the Imperials by ten to one, easy.

It won't be like this everywhere. Not yet. Many of the settlements are still contained by suppression fields-the Wookiees there are still imprisoned. But with their chips cooked, they will be able to push back and claim their prisons for themselves. And not every Wookiee is in a settlement.

The revolt has begun.

Greybok grumbles.

Hatchet leans in toward Jas, his shriveled Weequay face wearing a dubious mask. "He says the planet has had its revolutions before, you know."

"This one will stick," she says. She hopes.

"It better."

Palabar points. There, as she swoops the Halo low over the action, firing at troopers who are mounting guns on turrets, she sees the towering shape of the AT-AT walker ahead. The top of its cockpit is cracked open, and a familiar Wookiee is flinging the driver off into the air.

Chewie waves. Solo gives her a salute from below as he slides into the opening. The refugees-Kirratha and the others-walk on the back of the AT-AT like conquering doom-riders.

The Halo burns sky as it blasts forward.

Soon the settlement of Camp Sardo is aft. Jas weaves the ship through the wroshyr trees-ahead, a pair of LAITs come blasting through the mist, and Hatchet surprises them with a rain of red lasers. One transport's wing peels away-and it clips the second transport. Both spin down through the mist. The fog pulses with twin explosions.

Ahead, the mist thins. And one of Kashyyyk's coastlines emerges-a dark sea, the whitecapped tides cutting lines across the water. Beyond that, the Halo's scopes show a rocky island. That's Tolruck's fortress, a massive log-walled monstrosity built on the cusp of a long-dead volcano.

"Shall we soften them up before we set her down?" Hatchet asks.

She shrugs. "Why not? Light it up."

Hatchet grins and fires up the weapons system. He cackles.

- "It's over," Lozen Tolruck slurs. "The hunt has ended."

The warlord sits in his throne, slumping forward. Sap is sticky around his fingers and his lips. Jom has the thorn-knife in his hand, and he has the urging of a storm in him, but Sinjir stays him with a gentle gesture.

"Wait," he says.

"Sinjir-"

To the governor, Sinjir says: "You are coming with us."

"Sinjir-"

"This is what we do, Jom. We hunt the Imperials. We capture them and take them. He's taking a ride with us." He presses a hand against Jom's chest. "We're not killers."

How strange that sounds, coming out of his mouth. Hm.

Jom's one good eye closes. His chest rises and falls-the heaving breath of a man trying to contain his fury. That eye opens again. "Fine. Lozen Tolruck, you're under arrest by authority of the New Republic."

"It doesn't matter," Tolruck says, bubbles fizzing at his lips. His eyes search the space around them, but they don't seem to focus. "We're all dead. You and you and all the Wookiees and even me. All. Dead."

"What?" Sinjir asks. "Speak sense, you slobbering blob."

"If I can't have this world, then nobody can. Not the New Republic. Not the Wookiees. Certainly not the Empire."

The ground shudders.

"What was that?" Jom asks.

Another boom.

"Orbital bombardment," Tolruck says with a sloppy grin. Those two words, drawn out drunkenly. "Annihilation from the stars. Or rather, from the Star Destroyers. I sent the code. Nothing is to survive."

Sinjir whispers to Jom: "We have to move. Now."