Through a Wookiee's Eyes

The towering, red trees of the forest moon were impressive, but they were nothing compared to the mighty wroshyr trees of Kashyyyk, whose sacred forests stretched as far as the eye could see. They did, that is, before the Empire came.

The Empire. Chewbacca looked up at the pastel blue sky. The horrible, half-finished sphere of Vader's new favorite weapon hung in the sky, like a dreadful shadow of another station he had been forced to build years earlier, and then gladly helped destroy. Unless they succeeded here, many more systems would suffer the same fate as Alderaan.

"Chewie!" Han shouted. "Get in here! I need your help."

He ducked back into the bunker, walking past a clump of stormtroopers and Imperial officers, all bound and gagged in a pile. Han was waiting for him in the main control room.

"Throw me another charge, could you?" Han said, pointing at the bag of detonators on the ground. Chewie picked one up and tossed it gingerly to General Solo. He picked up a few more and began fastening them to key structural points around the bunker. They emitted a high-pitched, tone as they were armed which irritated his sensitive ears. With the amount of detonators they had placed, even a bunker of this size would be reduced to nothing but ashes. The only question was if it would be enough to destabilize the deflector shield, or their friends in the Rebel Fleet were about to meet an unfortunate demise at the hands of the Emperor's ultimate weapon.

"That'll do it, Chewie!" Han shouted. "Let's get out of here!"

Chewbacca hit the timed switch on the detonator and sprinted out the door. It only took a few bounding strides of his strong legs to overtake Han and bolt away ahead of him. He dove behind a tree. Moments later, a blinding flash of light cast long shadows out across the forest, followed by a shockwave that threatened to rip the very trees up by their roots. Clumps of dirt and shrapnel peppered the ground around them. When he finally dared to take a look from out behind his cover, all that remained of the deflector shield emitter was a smoldering crater. Their job was finished. It was all up to the fleet now.

"The shield is down!" Han announced into his communicator, shouting over the cheers of Ewoks, rebel soldiers, and Chewbacca's own feral yells.

"Hey!" Han called. "Help me get Leia somewhere safe. I've gotta bandage her up."

Almost without effort, he scooped the princess up in his arms and carried her back towards the village, and laid her on a soft bed of moss. He couldn't help but smile at the loving way Han wrapped the bandage around her injured arm. Even from the time they had first met (a prison break of all places) Leia had turned Han's crass nature into something... a little more caring. Chewbacca had already lived many human lifetimes. He had seen this sort of thing before. But he didn't think he'd ever seen anything quite so touching as Han Solo and Leia Organa.

Another bright flash suddenly bathed the forest moon in light as if it had a second sun. Chewie looked up to see the expanding cloud of ash and debris that stood where the Death Star had only moments earlier. The Emperor was no more.

*****

Human children always looked so frail. They had no teeth, no fur, no hair really whatsoever. Still, it was hard to deny that the tiny human was cute.

"We named him Ben," Leia said, placing the babe in his arms. He began to squirm as he peered up at the wookiee's face, looking like he was on the verge of crying.

"Oh, no, no," his mother said soothingly. "Don't worry, Ben. Chewie won't hurt you. You're safe with him."

It was a funny sight to see such a small child cradled in Chewbacca's great hairy paws. He growled in approval of the name. Han chuckled.