Hero's Trial: Agents of Chaos I Read Free Page B

some of Chewbacca’s accomplishments on his homeworld were familiar to C-3PO, his memory lacked anything in the way of corroborative data, so he summoned recollections of his own experiences with the Wookiee and was immediately inundated with a rapid-fire sequence of images, some of them dating back twenty-five standard years.
    His first sight of Chewbacca, standing like a cinnamon-colored tower outside Docking Bay 94 in the Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine … Chewbacca as a sore loser in dejarik holoboard contests … Chewbacca on Bespin’s Cloud City, incorrectly reattaching C-3PO’s head after it had been used by Ugnaughts as a plaything in a game of Wookiee in the Middle … Master Han’s assertion that Chewbacca was always thinking with his stomach … The many, many times Chewbacca was referred to as “flea-bitten furball,” “overgrown mophead,” “walking carpet,” or “noisy brute,” occasionally byC-3PO himself—in imitation of humans, of course—and always with affection, given Chewbacca’s scrupulous character and great size.
    A sudden flutter gripped C-3PO, and he found that he was unable to summon additional recollections. An unnatural and most discomfiting heat surged through his circuitry, prompting him to run a diagnostic program, which ultimately left the source of the glitch unrevealed.
    Ralrra woofed, brayed, and barked.
    [Natural curiosity compelled Chewbacca to leave Kashyyyk at an early age, but like all of us he was soon enslaved by the Empire. Fortunately, Chewbacca regained his freedom at the hands of a man of like strength and honorr—ourr revered brotherr Han Solo. And in the company of Han Solo, to whom he had pledged his life, Chewbacca was to play a crucial role in the Rebellion, and in the events that led eventually to the downfall of Emperor Palpatine.]
    C-3PO focused his photoreceptors on Master Han, whose eyes were red-rimmed and narrowed, and whose right hand Mistress Jaina had taken between her own. The dark-blue military-style trousers Master Han was wearing were similar to the tattered pair he had attempted to preserve for posterity, but which only the previous day had proved incapable of conforming to Master Han’s slightly increased waistline and had torn irreparably. Present during the incident—the cause of no small measure of vexation to Master Han—C-3PO had assisted in affixing to the outside seams of the replacement trousers twin embellishments known as Corellian Bloodstripes.
    Across from the father and daughter stood Master Jacen and Mistress Leia, her head resting on her elder son’s shoulder and her cheeks glistening with tears. Near them squatted Master Anakin, brooding and withdrawn, along with Master Luke, certainly no stranger to death, having lost both his natural and adoptive parents, as well as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda, two of his Jedi mentors.
    [Chewbacca went on to become a soldierr in the New Republic,] Ralrra boomed and rumbled. [He aided in Kashyyyk’s liberation afterr the Battle of Endorr. But he remained first and foremost devoted to Han Solo, as friend and indebted protectorr, and as guardian to Han Solo’s spouse and three children.] Ralrra turned to Han. [It was Chewbacca’s honorr to have been able to come to his friend’s rescue on several occasions, even as recently as the crisis involving the Yevetha, when he freed Han Solo from imprisonment aboard a Yevethan warship.]
    Once more C-3PO tightened the focus of his photoreceptors on Master Han, who lowered his head in abject grief, as Jaina stroked his shoulders. Master Han’s relationship with Chewbacca was similar to C-3PO’s with R2-D2, though it seemed at times that the two droids had been together even longer than had the human and the Wookiee.
    R2-D2 must have been regarding Master Han, as well, for the astromech suddenly rotated his monocular receptor to C-3PO and warbled tremulously, almost as if he, too, had picked up an enigmatic flutter.
    C-3PO changed the cant of