Behind Mace, the pilot of the first gunship finally recovered control, shutting down the port turbojet and bringing the craft around on repulsorlifts alone. Mace could feel Chalk recovering consciousness among the burning rocks, but he didn't have time to do anything for her right now. Instead, he followed the drift of her awakening mind into the Force-bond she shared with Galthra. One second was enough for Mace to sound the depths of that bond: he took its full measure.
Then he just took it.
Galthra's bond with Chalk was deep and strong, but it was a function of the Force, and Mace was a Jedi Master. Until he released the akk, Galthra's bond would be with him.
Mace hurled himself flipping through the air as Galthra sprang down to meet him. She hit the ground already gathered for her next leap and Mace finished his flip to land standing on her back. She was not trained to carry a rider in battle, but the flow of the Force through their bond made them a single creature. Mace wedged his left foot behind her cowl spines and she sprang out into the pass, bounding a jagged path through the inferno of flame and bursting stone.
Crouching low to take some cover from Galthra's massive skull, Mace slipped a grenade from the pack into the over-under's launcher, then slung the weapon without firing. Behind him, he felt the forward missile ports of the damaged gunship cycle open.
Mace murmured, "Right on time." He and Galthra reached the crest of the pass. The two gunships in front of him roared up the slope. The one behind launched a concussion missile at Galthra's back.
In the shaved semisecond after launch, that eyeblink when the missile seemed to hang in the air as though gathering itself for the full ignition of its main engine and the multiple dozens of standard gravities of acceleration it would pull in its lightning flight, the Force-bond between Mace and Galthra pulsed and the great akk made a sudden leap to the left.
The missile screamed past so close that its exhaust scorched Mace's scalp.
And one little nudge in the Force-hardly more than an affectionate chuck under the chin- tipped its diamond-shaped warhead up a centimeter or two, altering its angle of attack just enough that the missile skimmed the crest of the pass instead of impacting on the burning ground. It streaked on, punching black smoke into turbulence vortices that trailed its tail fins, until the lead gunship swooped up the far side of the pass and took the missile right up its nose.
A huge white fireball knocked it rearing back like a startled grasser, and black smoke poured from the twisted gap blown in its nose armor. Its turbojets roared, and smoke whipped from its screaming repulsorlifts as its pilot fought for control. The third gun-ship slewed, yawing wildly as it reversed thrust and dived to avoid ramming the other's rear end.
Mace and Galthra raced straight toward them.
As they passed the shuddering hulk of Chalk's grasser, Mace reached for the Thunderbolt. It flipped from the ground into his arms, its power pack nestling between his feet. He cradled the massive weapon at his hip, angled the barrel at the third gunship, and held down the trigger.
Mace surfed through the flames and black stinging smoke, over the slag of melting rock, through the thunder and shrapnel shrieks of bursting stone on the back of three-quarters of a metric ton of armored predator, firing from the hip, hammering out a fountain of packeted energy that ripped its way up the side of the gunship. The Thunderbolt didn't have the punch to penetrate the gunship's heavy armor plating, but that didn't matter; the roaring repeater was merely Mace's calling card, Galthra shot down the slope beneath the gunships and Mace turned to face them, riding backward, spraying the air with blaster-fire until the Thunderbolt overheated and coughed sparks and Mace cast it aside. The third gunship fired a pair of missiles, but Mace could feel their point of aim before they squeezed the triggers, and Galthra was so fast in response to his Force commands that neither of the missiles came close enough for its detonation to have so much as mussed his hair.
If he'd had any.
Now the gunship's side-mounted laser turrets rotated to track them, and through the Force Mace felt their targeting computers lock on. The two damaged ships reached firing position, and they also locked on. They were coordinating their fire: he could not hope to dodge. So he didn't bother. He brought Galthra to a halt beneath him.
He stood motionless, empty-handed, waiting for them to open fire.
Waiting to give them a brief tutorial on the art of Vaapad.
Their cannons belched energy and Mace threw himself into the Force, releasing all but his intention. It was no longer Mace Windu who acted: the Force acted through him. Depa's lightsaber snapped into his left hand while his own flipped into his right. The green cascade was a jungle-echo of the purple as they both met clawing chains of red.
On Sarapin, a Vaapad was a notoriously dangerous predator, powerful and rapacious. It attacked with its blindingly fast tentacles. Most had at least seven. It was not uncommon for them to have as many as twelve. The largest ever killed had twenty-one. The thing about a Vaapad was that you never knew how many tentacles it had until it was dead: they moved too fast to count. Almost too fast to see.
So did Mace's.
Energy sprayed around him, but only splatters of it grazed him here and there; the rest went back at the gunship. Though the Thunderbolt hadn't the power to penetrate their heavy armor, aTaim 8c Bak laser cannon is a whole different animal.
Ten bolts reached his blades. Two apiece went back at the dam aged ships, bursting against their armor and knocking them reeling to break their target lock. The other six hammered the cockpit of the third gunship, blasting a gaping hole in its transparisteel viewport.
Mace dropped the lightsabers, swung the over-under forward on its sling, and fired from the hip. It belched a single grenade that the Force guided right through that hole into the cockpit.
The grenade made a dull, wet-sounding whump inside the gunship. A fountain of white goo splashed out the hole.
Mace grunted to himself; he thought he'd loaded Nytinite.
Then he shrugged: Eh. Same difference.
One of the forward turbojets sucked strings of hardening glop through its intake, squealed, and chewed itself to shrapnel. The gun-ship lurched wildly; with the crew glued fast in the grenade's glop, there was nothing they could do except watch in horror as their ship careened into the face of the ridge and detonated in an impressive explosion that splashed flame three hundred meters down the slope.
Mace thought, And now, for my next trick.
He released the over-under and extended his hands and both lightsabers hurtled back to his grip- But the two damaged gunships had peeled off and were already limping away into the smoke-stained sky.
He watched them go, frowning.
He felt oddly distressed.
Unhappy.
This had been. strange. Uncomfortable.
His rigorous self-honesty wouldn't allow him to deny the actual word that described the feeling.
It had been unsatisfying.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU I don't know how long I stood there, frowning into the sky. Eventually, I recovered enough of my equanimity to slide off Galthra's back and release my hold on her Force-bond. She bounded off, searching for Chalk upslope among the burning rocks.
Nick came stumbling down the slope, picking his way through the dying flames, avoiding the half-slagged rocks that still glowed a dull red. He seemed most impressed by the fight.
Adrenaline drunk and childishly giggly, he seemed deliriously happy, bubbling over with jittery enthusiasm. I don't recall much of what he said beyond some nonsense about me being a "walking one-man war machine." Something like that. I'm not sure the word he used was walking.
Most of what he said was lost in the roar that lived inside my head: a hurricane-whirl of the thunder of my heart, echoes of the battle's explosions, and the tidal surge of the Force itself.
When he reached me, I saw that he was wounded: blood washed down his face and neck from a deep gash along the side of his head-probably a graze from a rock splinter. But he just kept on about how he'd never seen anything like me until I stopped him with a hand on his arm.
"You're bleeding," I told him, but that dark gleam in his bright blue eyes never wavered. He kept going on about "Alone against three gun-ships. Three. Alone." I told him that I hadn't been alone. I quoted Yoda: " "My ally is the Force.'" He didn't seem to understand, so I explained: "I had them outnumbered." What happened next I remember vividly, no matter how much I wish I could wipe it from my mind. I couldn't tear my eyes from the two damaged gunships that by then were mere specks of durasteel soaring into the limitless sky.
Nick followed my gaze, and said, "Yeah, I know how you feel. Shame you couldn't roast all three, huh?" "How I feel?" I rounded on him. "How,' feel?" I had a sudden urge to punch him: an urge so powerful the effort to restrain it left me gasping.
I wanted-I needed-to punch him. To punch him in the face. To feel my fist shatter his jaw.
To make him shut up.
To make him not look at me.
The understanding in his voice-the knowledge in his cold blue eyes- I wanted to hit him because he was right. He did know how I felt.
It was an ugly shock.
As he said: I'd wanted to destroy those other gunships, too. I wanted to rip them out of the sky and watch them burn. No thought of the lives I'd already taken in the first gunship. No thought of the lives I would take in the other two. In the Force, I reached out toward the burning wreckage on the ridge face above, searching among the flames; for what, I can't say.
I'd like to think I was feeling for survivors. Checking to see if there were any people, merely wounded, who might be saved from the wreckage. But I cannot honestly say that is true.
I might have just wanted to feel them burn.
I also cannot honestly say I'm sorry for the way the fight turned out.
Though I took their lives in self-defense, and the defense of others, neither I nor those I defended are innocents. I cannot honestly claim that my Korun companions are any more deserving of life than were the people in the gunship. What I did in the pass, I cannot call my duty as a Jedi.
What I did there had nothing to do with peace.
One might call it an accident of war: it happened that this small band of murderous guerrillas accompanied a Jedi Master, and so the spouses and children of a gunship crew have suffered a horrible loss. One might call it an accident of war. even I might call it that- If it had been anything resembling an accident.
If I hadn't been trying to bring that ship down. If I hadn't felt the fever in my blood: blood fever.
The lust for victory. To win, at any cost.
Blood fever.
I feel it even now.
It's not overpowering; I haven't fallen that far. Yet. It's more a preference. An expectation.
An anticipation that has been disappointed.
This is bad. Not the worst it can be, but bad enough.
I have long known that I am in danger here. But only now am I beginning to understand how dark and near that danger is; I never guessed how close Haruun Kal has already brought me to that fatal brink.
It is a side effect of the Force immersion of Vaapad. My style grants great power, but at a terrible risk. Blood fever is a disease that can kill anyone it touches. To use Vaapad, you must allow yourself to enjoy the fight. You give yourself to the thrill of battle. The rush of winning.
This is why so few students even attempt the style.
Vaapad is a path that leads through the penumbra of the dark side.
Here in the jungle, that shadow fringe is unexpectedly shallow. Full night is only a step away.
I must be very, very careful here.
Or I may come to understand what's happened to Depa all too well.
Mace lowered his head. The electric sizzle of combat drained from his limbs, leaving them heavy and hurting: he had a variety of superficial burns from plasma splatter and splinters of half- molten rock.
He made himself look back up the slope into the pass, through the dying flames and the black twists of fading smoke. In the pass above were dead akks, dead or wounded grassers, and Chalk and Besh and Lesh.
He recalled his Force-flash of this morning.
"Come on, settle down," he told Nick. It was astonishing how tired he'd suddenly become. "I think we have casualties." They worked their way up the ramp of scree. Above, Chalk limped over to her wounded grasser and shook her head: it had been terribly burned. One whole flank was only a mass of char. She walked back up the six-meter length of its body, dropped to one knee, and stroked its head. It made a faint honk of pain and distress, and nuzzled her hand as Chalk drew her slug pistol and shot it just below its crown eye.
The pistol's single sharp pop echoed from the cliff walls that bound the notch. To Mace, it sounded like a punctuation mark: a period for the end of the battle. The echoes made it into sardonic applause.
Besh and Lesh still huddled in the shadow of the dead akk. With the akk on one side and a huge crag on the other to shelter them from the flames, Mace thought they might have made it through.
Chalk got there before Nick and Mace. All the way down from the L
corpse of her grasser, her eyes stayed locked on where the brothers must have been, and from her face Mace could tell that what she saw was bad. She glanced over at Nick as he and Mace came up, and she gave that same slow expressionless shake of the head.
Besh sat on the ground by the dead akk's head. Hugging his knees. Rocking back and forth.
Scattered on the ground around him were contents of a standard medpac: hand scanner, spray hypos and bandages, bone stabilizers. He didn't seem to be injured, but he was pale as a dead man, and his eyes were round and blankly staring.
Lesh was in convulsions.
His face had twisted into a rigid mask, a blind gape at the empty afternoon sky. He bucked and writhed, hands clutching spastically, heels drumming the rocks. Mace's first thought was head wound-shrapnel or rock splinters in the skull could trigger such seizures-and he couldn't understand why Nick and Chalk and his own brother just stood as though they were helpless to do anything but watch him suffer. Dropping to a knee, Mace reached for the medpac scanner. Chalk said, "Leave it." Mace looked up at her. She gave him the head shake. "Dead already." Mace picked up the scanner anyway, and slid the medpac cover open to activate the display. The readout said Lesh wasn't wounded.
He was infected.
Unidentified bloodborne parasites had collected in his central nervous system. They had now entered a new stage in their life cycle.
They were eating his brain.
The previous night in the wallet tent made sense to Mace now: Lesh must have been sick with these parasites already. And Mace had thought it was nothing but stress and thyssel intoxication.
"Fever wasps," Nick said hoarsely. He was almost as pale as Besh. He could face violent death with a wink and a sarcastic one-liner, but this had his face shining with pale sweat. He stank of fear. "No telling when he might have been stung. Thyssel chewers go faster. The larvae like the bark. When they hatch-" He swallowed and his eyes went thin. He had to look away.
"They'll hatch from his skull. Through his skull. Like an, an, an eggshell." The pure uncomplicated horror on his face told Mace this wouldn't be the first time he'd seen it happen.
Mace set the medpac on a cool spot by the dead akk. "It says here he can still be saved." It took only a second to charge a spray hypo with thanatizine. "We can put him in suspended animation. Slow down the. wasp larvae. until we can get him to Pelek Baw and a full hospital. Even if he's identified-" Besh looked up at him, and shook his head in a mute No.
Mace brushed past him and knelt at Lesh's side. "We can save him, Besh. Maybe it'll mean giving him up to the militia, but at least he'll be alive," Besh caught Mace's arm. His eyes were raw, spidered with blood. Again, he shook his head.
"Master Windu." Nick picked up the medpac case and glanced at the readout. "Lesh is way more advanced than this thing says." "Medpac scanners are extremely reliable. I can't imagine it's wrong." "It's not wrong," Nick said softly. He turned the case so that Mace could check the screen again. "These aren't Lesh's readings." "What?" Besh, looking at the ground, touched his own chest with the tips of his fingers, then sagged; he seemed to crumple in on himself, breath leaving him along with hope and fear. His Force aura shaded into black despair.
Mace looked from Besh to Nick and back again, and then at Lesh spasming on the rocks, and then at the spray hypo still clutched nervelessly in his hand. Not because the jungle kills you, Nick had said. Just because it is what it is.
Nick retrieved the medpac's scanner and waved it near Mace's head. "You're okay," he said thinly, licking pale sweat from his upper lip. "No sign of infestation." He turned to Chalk, frowning down at the medpac's readout.
His shoulders slumped and his hand started to shake.
He had no words, but he didn't need any. She read her fate on his face.
She stiffened and her mouth went thin and hard. Then she turned away and marched downslope.
"Chalk-" Nick called after her helplessly. "Chalk, wait-" "Getting the Thunderbolt, me." Her voice was squeezed flat, as unemotional as a navcomp's vocabulator. "Good weapon. Will need it, you." Nick turned his stricken look on Mace. "Master Windu-" He held out the medpac scanner imploringly. "Don't make me do my own reading, huh?" Mace quickly scanned Nick's spine and skull. The readings indicated a clear negative, but Nick didn't seem much relieved.
"Yeah, well," he said with understated bitterness, "if I was gonna die in the next day or two, I wouldn't have to worry about taking care of them." "Taking care of them?" Mace said. "Is there a treatment?" "Yeah." Nick drew his pistol. "I got their treatment right here." "That's your answer?" Mace stepped in front of him. "Kill your friends?" "Just Lesh," he said, his voice grim and hard, even though it trembled a little, like his hand. He didn't have Chalk's mental toughness. His eyes watered, and his face twisted, and he could barely make himself look at his friends. "Time enough to take care of Besh and Chalk when they start the twitches." Mace still couldn't believe Nick was serious. "You want to just shoot them? Like Chalk's grasser?" "Not like her grasser," Nick said. His face had gone gray. "Not in the head. Scatters the larvae. Some of them will be developed enough to be dangerous." He coughed. "To us." "So it's not enough that he dies." Mace breathed Jedi discipline into a wall around his heart: to lock down his empathic horror at the gray rictus of Lesh's face. Pink-tinged foam bubbled from Lesh's lips. "The. infested areas. have to be destroyed. Brain and spinal cord." Nick nodded, looking even sicker. "With wasp fever, we usually burn the body, but." Mace understood. The escaped gunships would have transmitted their position. No telling what might already be on its way.
He could not believe what he was about to do. He could not even believe what he was about to say. But he was a Jedi. The purpose of his life was to do what must be done. To do what others would not, or could not.
No matter what it was.
He undipped the lightsabers from his belt. His own and Depa's both.
Green blade and purple sizzled together in the smoke-hazed air.
Besh looked up from the ground. Chalk went still on the slope, the Thunderbolt cradled in her arms. Nick opened his mouth as though he wanted to say something, but didn't know what it might be.
They all stared at Mace as though they'd never seen him before.
"He's your friend. Your brother." Mace took a deep breath, steadying his own fear and revulsion and his dark, dark loathing for what he must do. "You might want to say good-bye." Besh shook his head mutely. With an inarticulate sob compounded of grief and terror, he threw himself to his feet and stumbled away upslope.
Chalk only held Mace's eye for a second, and gave him one slow nod. Then she followed Besh. She put one strong arm around Besh's shoulders. Besh collapsed against her, sobbing.
Nick was the last. His eyes showed nothing but pain. Finally, he shook his head, and tears spilled onto his cheeks. "He's already gone." He touched Mace on the shoulder. "Master Windu-you don't have to do this-" "Yes, I do," Mace said. "Or you'll have to." Nick nodded reluctant understanding.
"Thanks. Windu, uh, Master, I-just-thanks." He turned and walked after the others. "I won't forget it." Neither would Mace.
He stared down at Lesh between the two shining blades. He reached into the Force, seeking to touch anything of the young man that might remain, to offer what little comfort might be his to give, but it was as Nick said: Lesh was already gone. A long moment passed while Mace composed himself, found an attitude of calm reverence, and consigned whatever might have been left of Lesh's consciousness or spirit to the Force. Then he took a deep breath, lifted his blades, and began.
The razorback ridge eclipsed the southern sky behind them. The jungle canopy overhead glowed with early sunset; on the ground it was already twilight. The companions walked along a broad track crushed bare by repeated passages of steamcrawler treads. The canopy had arched over the track, joining above so that their path lay along a jungle-lined tunnel that wound and switchbacked up and down the folds that radiated from the ridge's north face.
Mace wore bacta patches trimmed to fit the worst of his burns. Nick's temple was shiny with spray bandage. Chalk wore a sling restraining the shoulder she'd separated when she tumbled into the rocks, and a compression wrap supported her twisted knee. Besh walked in expressionless silence. He might have been in shock.
What was left of Lesh was buried at the tree line.
Their backpacks were heavy with supplies scavenged from the dead grassers. Little of Mace's gear survived; his wallet tent, his changes of clothing, his own medpac and identikit, all had been destroyed with Nick's grasser. The war on Haruun Kal was erasing Mace's connections to life outside the jungle: of all the physical evidence that he had ever been anything other than a Korun, only the two lightsabers remained.
Even the fake datapad that he had carried all this way-its miniature subspace coil must have been damaged in the blast. He'd considered summoning the Halleck to evacuate Besh and Chalk for medical treatment, despite the fact that it would have severely compromised his mission here; the sudden appearance of a Republic cruiser in the Al" Har system would certainly have drawn entirely too much Separatist attention. But the datapad's holocomm had been unable to even pick up a carrier wave. His last link to what Depa called the Galaxy of Peace was as dead as the Balawai militia Mace had sent crashing into the razorback ridge.
A stroke of irony-the fake datapad's recording function still worked. Disguise had become reality: the datapad was a fake no longer. Mace had a superstitious hunch that this was somehow symbolic.
Galthra walked among them at Chalk's side instead of ranging around; she was the last of their akks. With a little luck, her presence alone might keep major predators at a respectful distance.
No gunships had yet come to the pass behind them. Mace found this inexplicable, and disturbing. Once in a while, Galthra gave a Force-twitch that may have meant she heard engines in the distance, but it was hard to tell. Mostly, she mourned her dead packmates: her Force presence was a long moan of grief and loss.
They pushed on. Nick set a killing pace. He had not spoken since they'd buried Lesh's remains.
Mace guessed that Nick was thinking about Besh and Chalk; he himself certainly was.
Thinking about the fever wasp larvae that teemed within their brain and spinal cord tissue. They might have a day or two before dementia would begin. A day or two after that: convulsions and an ugly death. Besh walked with his head down, shivering, as though he could think of nothing else; Chalk marched like a war droid, as though suffering and death were too alien for her to even comprehend, let alone fear.
Mace matched Nick's pace, close by his side. "Talk to me." Nick's eyes stayed on the jungle ahead. "Why should I?" "Because I want to know what you have in mind." "What makes you think I have anything in mind? What makes you think anything I might have in mind can make a difference?" His voice was angrily bitter. "We have two people about to go into second-stage wasp fever. No grassers. One akk. A handful of weapons, militia on our tail. And you and me." His gaze slid sideways to meet Mace's. His eyes were red and raw.
"We're dead. You get it? Like that tusker in the death hollow: a few meters short of where we needed to be. We didn't make it. We're dead." "For dead men," Mace observed, "we're making good time." For an instant he thought Nick might crack a smile. Instead, Nick shook his head. "There's a lor pelek who travels with Depa's band. He's. very powerful. More than powerful. If we can get Besh and Chalk to him before they start the twitches, he might be able to save them." Lor pelek: "jungle master." Shaman. Witch doctor. Wizard. In Korun legend, the lor pelek was a person of great power, and great peril. As unpredictable as the jungle. He brought life or death: a gift or a wound. In some stories, a lor pelek was not a being at all, but was rather pelekotan incarnate: the avatar of the jungle-mind.
Mace made a connection. "Kar Vaster." Nick goggled at him. "How'd you know that? How'd you know his name?" "How long before we reach them?" Nick trudged on a few paces before he answered. "If we still had grassers, and akks for warding? Maybe two days. Maybe less. On foot? With only one akk?" His shrug was expressive.
"Then why march us so hard?" "Because I do have something in mind." He flicked a sidelong glance at Mace. "But you're not gonna like it." "Will I like it less than having to do to Besh and Chalk what I had to do to Lesh?" "That's not for me to say." Nick's gaze went remote, staring off into the gloom-filled tunnel ahead. "There's a little outpost settlement about an hour west of here. Ones like it are strung out every hundred klicks or so along these steamcrawler tracks. They'll have a secure bunker, and a comm unit. Even though we-the ULF-don't use comms, we still monitor the frequencies. We get in there, we can send a coded signal to them with our position. Then we put Chalk and Besh in thanatizine suspension, sit tight, and hope for the best." "A Balawai settlement?" He nodded. "We don't have settlements. DOKAWs saw to that." "These Balawai-they'll take us in?" "Sure." Nick's teeth gleamed in the jungle twilight, and that manic spark kindled in his eyes.
"You just have to know how to ask." Mace's face darkened. "I won't let you harm civilians. Not even to save your friends." "No need to scorch your scalp over that one," Nick said, trudging onward. "Out here, civilians are a myth." Mace didn't want to ask what Nick meant by that. He came to a stop on the rugged track.
He saw again the holoprojected carnage spread across the Supreme Chancellor's desk; he saw again images of huts broken and burned, and nineteen corpses in the jungle. "You were right," he said. "I don't like it. I don't like it at all." Nick kept walking. He didn't even look over his shoulder as he left Mace behind. "Yeah, well, as soon as you come up with a better idea," he said into the darkness ahead, "you be sure to let me know, huh?" CIVILIANS FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU In this bunker, the air is closer to cool than any I've felt since the interrogation room in the Ministry of Justice. The bunker is set into the igneous stone of the hillside-mostly just a durasteel door across the mouth of a bubble some pocket of gas or softer stone once left in the granite here. Though it overlooks the remnants of the outpost compound below, it was clearly never meant to be a combat position: no gun ports. From the way it's constructed- excavated-I believe it was more along the lines of a panic room: a safe place to hole up in the event of an attack. A safe place to wait for help from the militia.
If so, it didn't work.
The night air gently curls around the twisted shards that are all that's left of the door; its whispering passage darkly echoes the violence that still hums in the Force around me.
I dare not meditate. The dark is too deep here. It has a tidal pull: a black hole that I've taken up too tight an orbit around, and it's tearing me in half. Gravity draws the near half of me in toward an event horizon that I'm afraid to even glimpse.
Behind me, lost in the night shadows against the stone, Besh and Chalk lie motionless, nearly as cool as the rock they lie on, in full tha natizine suspension. Only with the Force can I tell that they still live: their hearts beat less than once per minute, and an hour spans no more than ten or twelve shallow breaths. The fever wasp larvae in their bodies are similarly suspended; Besh and Chalk might survive a week or more like this.
Provided nothing eats them in the meantime.
Making sure they're safe is my job. Right now, it's my only job. And so I sit among the wreckage of this doorway and stare out into the infinite night.
The Thunderbolt rests on its bipod in the doorway, muzzle canted toward the sky. Chalk maintains her beloved weapon well; she insisted on field-stripping it one last time before she would let me inject her. I have test-fired it at intervals, and it's still working fine. Though I am trying to learn to feel the action of the metal-eating fungi in the Force, the way the Korunnai do, I prefer to depend on practical experiment.
There is little for me to do right now. I pass the time by recording this-and by thinking about my argument with Nick.
Back on the trail, Nick said that civilians are a myth. He meant, I found, that there are no civilians out here: that to be in the jungle is to be in the war. The Balawai government promulgates a myth of innocent jungle prospectors being massacred by savage Korun partisans.
This, Nick says, is only propaganda.
Now, here in the ruins of this Balawai outpost, I find the thought oddly comforting-but earlier this evening I rejected the idea instinctively. It seemed to me nothing more than rationalization. An excuse. A sop to consciences haunted by atrocities. On the hike along the steam-crawler track that led us here, Nick and I went back and forth about it quite a bit.
According to Nick, civilians stay in the cities; the only real civilians on Haruun Kal are the waiters and the janitors, the storekeepers and the taxicart pullers. He said there's a reason why jungle prospectors carry such heavy weapons, and that reason has more to do with akk dogs than with vine cats. Balawai do not go into the jungle unless they're ready, willing, and able to kill Korunnai. Nobody on either side waits for the other to attack. In the jungle, if you don't strike first you're nothing but prey.
Then I asked him about the dead children.
It's the only time I've yet seen Nick angry. He wheeled on me like he wanted to throw a punch. "What children?" he said. "How old do you have to be to pull a trigger? Kids make great soldiers. They barely know what fear is." It is wrong to make war on children-or with them-and I told him so. No matter what.
They're not old enough to understand the consequences of their actions. He replied in staggeringly obscene terms that I should tell that to the Balawai.
"What about our children?" He shook with barely restrained fury. "The jups can leave their kids at home in the city. Where do we leave ours? You've seen Pelek Baw. You know what happens to a Korun kid on those streets-,' know what happens. I was one of them. Better blown to pieces out here than having to-survive-like I did. So then, out here, how do you tell the gunners in those ships that the Korunnai they're happily blowing arms and legs off of, are only kids?" "Does that justify what happens to the Balawai children? The ones who don't stay in the cities?" I asked him. "The Korunnai aren't firing down at random from a gunship. What's your excuse?" "We don't need an excuse," he said. "We don't murder kids. We're the good guys." "Good guys," I echoed. I could not keep a bitter edge from my voice: the holographic images shown to Yoda and me in Palpatine's office are never far beneath the surface of my mind. "I have seen what's left behind when your good guys are done with a jungle prospector outpost," I told him. "That's why I'm here." "Sure it is. Hah. Let me share something with you, huh?" Changeable as a summer storm, Nick's anger had blown away between one eye-blink and the next. He gave me a look of amused pity. "I've been waiting for days for you to bring that up." "What?" "You Jedi and your secrets and all that tusker poop. You think nobody else can keep their chip-cards close to the chest?" He rolled his eyes and waggled his fingers near his face. "Ooo, look out, I'm a Jedi! I know things Too Dangerous for Ordinary Mortals! Careful! If you don't stand back, I might tell you something Beings Were Not Meant to Know!" It has occurred to me, on reflection, that Nick Rostu can be regarded as a test of my moral conviction. A Jedi might conceivably fall to the dark from the simple desire to smack the snot out of him.
At the time, I managed to restrain myself, and even to maintain a civil tone, while Nick revealed that he knew all about the jungle massacre and the data wafer.
It wasn't easy.
He told me that not only had he been there-at the very scene Yoda and I had viewed in Palpatine's office-he had been in the company of Depa and Kar Vastor when they'd thought the whole scheme up. He had helped them dress the scene, and later it was Nick himself who had tipped off Republic Intelligence.
Even now, hours later, it's hard for me to put into words how that made me feel.
Disoriented, certainly: almost dizzy. Disbelieving.
Betrayed.
I have been carrying those images like a wound. They've festered in my mind, so inflamed and painful I've had to cushion them in layers of denial. Pain like that makes a wound precious; when the slightest touch is agony, one must keep the wound so protected, so sequestered, that it becomes an object of reverence. Sacred.
But Nick told the story like it had been just some kind of practical joke.
Hmm. I find now another word for how I felt. For how I feel.
Angry.
This, too, makes meditation difficult. And risky.
It is as well that Nick left on Galthra some hours ago. Perhaps before he returns-,'/he returns-I will have found a place in my mind to put these things he shared with me, where they will no longer whisper violence behind my heart.
The whole massacre was staged.
Not fake. The bodies were real. The death was real. But it was a setup. It was a practical joke. On me.
Depa wanted me here.
That's what this has been about. From the beginning.
That data wafer wasn't a frame, and it wasn't a confession. It was a lure. She wanted to draw me from Coruscant, bring me to Haruun Kal, and drop me into this nightmare jungle.
Many of the corpses were indeed jungle prospectors, Nick told me. Jups, when they're not harvesting the jungle, act as irregulars for the Balawai militia. They are vastly more dangerous than the gunships and the detector satellites and all the DOKAWs and droid starfighters and armies of the Separatists put together. They know the jungle. They live in it. They use it.
They are more ruthless than the ULF.
The rest of the corpses in that staged little scene-they were Korun prisoners. Captured by the jups. Captured and tortured and maltreated beyond my ability to describe; when the ULF caught up, the first thing the Balawai did was execute the few prisoners who were still alive.
Nick tells me that none of them escaped. None of the prisoners. And none of the jups.
The children- The children were Korunnai.
This Kar Vastor-what kind of man must he be? Nick told me it was Kar Vastor who nailed that data wafer into the dead woman's mouth with brassvine thorns. Nick told me it was Kar Vastor who persuaded the ULF to leave the corpses in the jungle. To make the scene so gruesome that I'd be sure to come here to investigate. To leave dead children-their own dead children-to the jacunas and the screw maggots and the black stinking carrion flies so full of blood they can only waddle across rotting flesh- Stop. I have to stop. Stop talking about this. Stop thinking about it.
I can't-this isn't- Nothing in this world can be trusted. What you see is not related to what you get. I don't seem to be able to comprehend any of it.
But I'm learning. In learning, I'm changing. The more I change, the more I understand. That's what frightens me. I shudder to think what will happen when I really begin to understand this place.
By the time I finally get it, who will I be?
I'm afraid that the man I was would despise the man I am becoming. I have a terrible dread that this transformation is exactly what Depa had in mind when she decided to draw me here.
She said there was nothing more dangerous than a Jedi who'd finally gone sane.
I think she is dangerous.
I'm afraid she wants me to become dangerous, too.
I should-I need to change the-think about something other than- Because I asked Nick about her.
I couldn't help myself. Hope blossomed along with my anger-if the holo was a setup, maybe what she'd said was no more than. atmosphere. Local color. Something.
Despite my determination to hold myself unbiased until I could see her, speak with her, feel her essence in the Force-despite my resolve to ask nothing, and hear nothing-despite all my years of self-discipline and self-control- The heart has power that no discipline can answer.
So I asked him. I told him of Depa's words on the data wafer: how she called herself the darkness in the jungle, and how she said that she had finally gone sane.
How I fear that in fact she has fallen to the dark, and is irretrievably mad.
And Nick- And Nick- "Crazy?" he said with a laugh. "You're the one who's crazy. If she was crazy, nobody'd follow her, would they?" But when I asked if he meant she was all right, he responded, "That depends on what you mean by all right." "I need to know if you've seen her act from anger, or fear. I need to know if she uses the Force for her personal gratification: for gain, or for revenge. I need to know how much hold the dark side has on her." "You don't have to worry about that," he told me. "I've never met someone kinder or more caring than Master Billaba. She's not evil. I don't think she could be." "This isn't about good and evil," I told him. "This is about the fundamental nature of the Force itself. Jedi are not moralists. That's a common misperception. We are fundamentally pragmatic.
The Jedi is I
altruistic less because to be so is good, than because to be so is safe: to use the Force for personal ends is dangerous. This is the trap that can snare even the most good, kind, caring Jedi: it leads to what we call the dark side. Power to do good eventually becomes just power.
Naked force. An end in itself. It is a form of madness to which Jedi are peculiarly susceptible." Nick answered this with a shrug. "Who knows the real reasons why anybody does anything?" This was not a comforting response, and the rest of what he told me was worse.
He says the words on that crystal are just how Depa talks, now. He says she has nightmares-that screams from her tent tear through the camp. He says no one ever sees her eat-that she's wasting away as though something inside is instead eating her. He says she has headaches that painkillers cannot touch, and sometimes cannot leave her tent for days at a time.
That when she walks outside in daylight, she binds her eyes, for she cannot bear the light of the sun.
I am sorry I asked. I am sorry that Nick told me.
I'm sorry that he did not lie.
It is very un-Jedi to fear the truth.
I'll continue the story. Putting experience into words is a gain in perspective. Which I need.
And it's a way to pass the hours of the night, which I also need. Even for a Jedi Master, accustomed to meditation and reflection-trained for it-there is such a thing as spending too much time alone with one's thoughts.
Especially out here.
This outpost settlement was built at the crest of a shoulder sloping down from the ridge. The ridge here isn't a razorback anymore, but rather a sine-wave wall of volcanic mounds. The settlement stands on a green-splashed outcrop; to either side of this jungle-clutched fist of stone are blackened washes where lava occasionally flows down from a major caldera, which is about six hundred meters above where I sit and record this. If you listen closely, you might hear the rumble. This microphone may not be sensitive enough. There-hear that? It's ramping up for another eruption. i*m't'tu. juni 11.1't't These eruptions come regularly enough that the jungle doesn't have time to reclaim the lava's path; heat-scorched trees line the washes, with leaves cooked off on the lava side. Eruptions must not be too serious in these parts. Otherwise, why build an outpost here?
Well- I suppose it could have been for the view.
The bunker itself is slightly elevated above the rest of the compound. From where I sit in the wreckage of the doorway, I can look down over a charred mess of tumbled and broken prefab huts and the shattered perimeter wall. Pale glowvine light shows gray on the steamcrawler track that switchbacks up the side of the shoulder.
Out across the jungle- I can see for kilometers up here: ghost-ripples of canopy spread below, silver and black and veined with glowvines, pocked with winking eyes of scarlet and crimson and some just dull red: open calderae, active and bubbling in this volatile region. It's breathtaking.
Or maybe that's just the smell.
Another of the ironies that have come crowding into my life: all my worry about civilians, and battles, and massacres, and having to fight and maybe kill men and women who may be only civilians, innocent bystanders, and all my arguing with Nick and everything he told me- All for nothing. Needn't have worried. When we got here, there was no one left to fight.
The ULF had been here already.
There were no survivors.
I will not describe the condition of the bodies. Seeing what had been done here was bad enough; I feel no urge to share it, even with the Archives.
I will grant Nick this: the Balawai at this outpost had clearly been no innocent civilians. The Korunnai had left the bodies draped with what must have been the most prized pieces of the jups'jewelery: necklaces of human ears.
Korunnai ears.
Based on the limited scavenger damage and the low decomposition, Nick guessed that the ULF band who'd done this might have passed through here no more than two or three days before. And there were certain, mmmm, signs-things done to the bodies-and echoes in the Force that don't seem to fade away, a standing wave of power, that suggests this had been the work of Kar Vastor himself.
The ULF guerrillas had also thoroughly looted this place; there is not a scrap of food to be found, and only useless bits and pieces of technology and equipment. The wreckage of two steamcrawlers lies tumbled downslope. The comm gear is gone as well, of course, which is why I alone am here to watch over Besh and Chalk.
When we found the comm gear gone, Nick's spirits collapsed. He seems to alternate despair with that manic cheerfulness of his, and it's not always easy to guess what will trigger either state. He let himself flop to the bloodstained ground, and gave us up for dead. He returned to his mantra from the pass: "Bad luck," he muttered under his breath. "Just bad luck." Despair is the herald of the dark side. I touched his shoulder. "Luck," I told him softly, "does not exist. Luck is only a word we use to describe our blindness to the subtle currents of the Force." His response was bitter. "Yeah? What subtle current killed Lesh? Is this what your Force had planned foryou? For Besh and Chalk?" "The jedi say," I replied, "that there are questions to which we can never have answers; we can only be answers." He asked me angrily what that was supposed to mean. I told him: "I am neither a scientist nor a philosopher. I'm a Jedi. I don't have to explain reality. I just have to deal with it." "That's what I'm doing." "That's what you're avoiding." "You have a Jedi power that can get all of us to Depa and Kar in a day? Or three? They're marching away from us. We can't catch up. That's reality. The only one there is." "Is it?" I let a thoughtful gaze rest on Galthra's broad back. "She moves well through this jungle. I know that akks are not beasts of burden-but one man, alone, she might be able to carry at great speed." "Well, yeah. If I didn't have to worry about you guys-" He stopped. His eyes narrowed.
"Not a chance. Not a chance, Windu! Drop it." "I'll watch over them until you get back." "I said drop it! I'm not leaving you here." "It's not up to you." I stepped close to him. Nick had to bend his neck to look up into my eyes. "I'm not arguing with you, Nick. And I'm not asking you. This is not a discussion. It's a briefing." Nick is a stubborn young man, but he's not stupid. It didn't take him long to understand that until he met me, he didn't know what stubborn looked like.
We managed to rig an improvised bareback pad for Galthra; Nick and Chalk and I persuaded Galthra, through the Force, to bear Nick on her back as she had me, and carry him swiftly through the jungle on the trail of the departed Korunnai. The three of us watched them vanish into the living night, then Besh and Chalk arranged themselves as comfortably as possible on the bunker floor, and I injected them with tha-natizine.
We all wait together, in the hope that Nick will win through the jungle, in the hope that he might find and bring back this Kar Vaster-this dangerous lor pelek, this terror of the living and mutilator of the dead-and that this man of no conscience or human feeling might use his power to save two lives.
I wonder what Kar Vaster will think, when he arrives, and finds what I have done to the scene of his victory.
I have spent some hours-between the time Nick left and the time I sat down here to record this entry-giving the dead a decent burial. Nick will no doubt laugh, and make some snide remark about how little I understand, how naive and unready I am for a part in this war. He'll probably ask me if burying these people makes them any less dead. I can only reply to this imagined scorn with a shrug.
I didn't do it for them. I did it for me. I did it because this is the only way I have to express my reverence for the life that was torn from them, enemy or no.
I did it because I don't want to be the kind of man who would leave someone-like that.
Anyone.
I sit here now, knowing that Depa has passed within a few klicks of here; that she stood, perhaps, on this very spot. Within the past forty-eight standard hours. No matter how deeply I reach into the Force-how deeply I reach into the stone beneath and the jungle around-I can feel nothing of her. I have felt nothing of her on this planet.
All I feel is the jungle, and the dark.
I think of Lesh a lot. I keep seeing how he writhed on the ground, twitching in convulsions, teeth clenched and eyes rolling, his whole body twisting with furious life-but the life that twisted him was not Lesh's. It was something that was eating him from the inside out. When I reached into the Force for him, all I felt was the jungle. And the dark.
And then I think of Depa again.
Perhaps I should listen more, and think less.
The eruption seems to be strengthening. The rumbling is loud as a Pelek Baw throughway, and tremors have begun to shake the ston? floor. Mmm. And rain has begun, as it often will: triggered by particu-lates in the smoke plume.
Speaking of smoke- Among the equipment looted by the ULF would have been, no doubt, breath masks; I may miss them more than anything else. I must have a care for my lungs. On this outcrop, I'm in little danger from lava, but the gases that roll downslope from such eruptions can be caustic as well as smothering. Besh and Chalk will be safer than I. Perhaps I should risk a hibernation trance; no predator will reach us through the eruption. Predators need to breathe, too.
And they- That- Wait, that sounded like- Queer. Some Haruun Kal jungle predators mimic their prey's mating calls or cries of distress, to lure or to drive them. I wonder what kind of predator that one was: something that preys on humans, it must be. That cry almost got me. Sounded exactly like a child's scream of terror.
I mean, exactly.
And now this one- Oh.
Oh, no.
That's Basic. Those are screams. There are children out there.
Mace pelted downslope, running half blind through rain and smoke and steam, navigating by ear: heading for the screams.
Smoke from the caldera above had smothered the glowvines; his only light was the scarlet hellglow that leaked through cracks in the black crusts floating on lava flows. Rain flashed to steam a meter above the washes. A swirling red-lit cloud turned the night to blood.
Mace threw himself into the Force, letting it carry him bounding from rock to branch to rock, flipping high over crevices, slipping past black-shadowed tree trunks and under low branches with millimeters to spare. The voices came intermittently; in between, through the downpour and the eruption and the hammering of his own heart, Mace heard a grinding of steel on stone, and the mechanical thunder of an engine pushed to the outer limits of its power.
It was a steamcrawler.
It lay canted at a dangerous angle over a precipice, only a lip of rock preventing a fall into bottomless darkness. One track clanked on air; the other was buried in hardening lava. Lava doesn't behave as a liquid so much as a soft plastic: as it rolls downslope it cools, and its piecemeal transition into solid rock can produce unpredictable changes in direction: it forms dams and blockages and self-building channels that can twist flows kilometers to either side, or even make them "retreat" and overflow an upstream channel. The immense vehicle must have been trying to climb the track to the outpost when one of the lava washes plugged, dammed itself, then diverted and swept the steamcrawler off the track, down this rainwash gully until it jammed against the lip of rock. The curl and roll of lava broke through black patches of crust around it, scarlet slowly climbing the crawler's undercarriage.
Though steamcrawlers were low-tech-to reduce their vulnerability to the metal-eating fungi-they were far from primitive. A kilometer below the caldera, the lava flow didn't come close to the melting point of the advanced alloys that made up the steamcrawler's armor and treads. But lava was filling in the gap below its flat undercarriage until the only real question was whether the rising lava would topple the steamcrawler over the lip before enough heat conducted through its armor to roast whoever was inside. But not everyone was inside.
Mace skidded to a stop just a meter upslope of where the flow had cut the track. The lava had slashed through the dirt to bedrock, making the edge of the gully where Mace stood into an unstable cliff, eight meters high, above a sluggish river of molten stone; the steam-crawler was a further ten meters down to his right. Its immense headlamps threw a white glare into the steam and the rain. Mace could just barely make out two small forms huddled together on the highest point: the rear corner of the cabin's heavily canted roof. Another crawled through the yellow-lit oblong of an open side hatch and joined them.
Three terrified children sobbed on the cabin roof; in the Force, Mace could feel two more inside-one injured, in pain that was transforming into shock, the other unconscious. Mace could feel the desperate determination of the injured one to get the other out the open hatch before the 'crawler toppled-because the injured one inside couldn't know that getting out the hatch wouldn't help any of them at all. They still faced a simple choice of dooms: over the precipice or into the lava. Dead either way.
If, as some philosophers argued, there was a deeper purpose in the universe that the Jedi served, beyond their surface social function of preserving the peace of the Republic-if there was, in fact, a cosmic reason why Jedi existed, a reason why they were granted powers so far beyond the reach of other mortals-it must have had something to do with situations like this.
Mace opened himself to the Force. He could hear Yoda's voice: Size matters not-which, Mace had always privately considered, was more true for Yoda than it was for any of his students. Yoda would probably just reach out, lift the steamcrawler from the gully, and ca sually float it up the mountain to the outpost while croaking some enigmatic maxim about how Even a volcano is as nothing, compared to the power of the Force. Mace was much less confident in his own raw power.
But he had other talents.
A new tremor from the eruption shook the dirt cliff under his feet. He felt it sag: undercut by the river of lava, the shaking was rapidly destroying the cliff's structural integrity. Any second now it would collapse, sending Mace down into the river, unless he did something first.
The something he did was to reach deep through the Force until he could feel a structure of broken rock ten meters below him and five meters in from the face. He thought, Why wait? and shoved.
The dirt cliff shook, buckled, and collapsed.
With a subterranean roar that buried even the thunder of the eruption and the clamor of the steamcrawler's laboring engine, hundreds of tons of dirt and rock poured into the river of lava, organics bursting into flames that the growing landslide instantly smothered as it built itself into a huge wedge-shaped berm of raw dirt across the gully; as lava slowly bulged and climbed the upstream face, the downstream side of the cliff continued to collapse, piling over cooler lava that hardened beneath it, pushing the hotter, more liquid lava into a wave that washed around the steamcrawler's side, welled to the lip of the precipice, then plunged in a rain of fire upon the black jungle far below.
The landslide built into a wave of its own that filled in the gully as it rolled down toward the steamcrawler and the screaming, sobbing children-and on the very crest of that wave of dirt and rock, backpedaling furiously to keep from being sucked under by the landslide's roll, came Mace Windu.
Mace rode that crest while the wave sank and flattened and finally lurched to a halt, its last remnants trickling into a ridge that joined Mace's position with the corner of the steamcrawler's cabin. Nearly all his concentration stayed submerged in the Force, spread throughout the slide, using a wide-focus Force grip to stabilize the rubble while he scrambled down to the steamcrawler's roof.
On the roof were two young boys, both about six, and a girl of perhaps eight standard years.
They clung to each other, sobbing, terror-filled eyes staring through their tears.
Mace squatted beside them and touched the girl's arm. "My name is Mace Windu. I need your help." The girl sniffled in astonishment. "You-you-my help?" Mace nodded gravely. "I need you to help me get these boys to safety. Can you do that?
Can you take the boys up the same way I came down? Climb right up the crest. It's not steep." "I–I-I don't-I'm afraid-" Mace leaned close and spoke in her ear only a little louder than the hush of the rain. "Me, too. But you have to act brave. Pretend. So you don't scare the little boys. Okay?" The girl scrubbed her runny nose with the back of her hand, blinking back tears. "I–I- you're scared, too?" "Shh. That's a secret. Just between us. Come on, up you go." "Okay." she said dubiously, but she wiped her eyes and took a deep breath and when she turned to the other two children her voice had the bossy edge that seems to be the exclusive weapon of eight-year-old girls. "Urno, Nykl, come on! Quit crying, you big babies! I'm going to save us." As the girl bullied the two boys up onto the face of the slide, Mace moved on to the hatchway. Though it was a side hatch, the angle of the steamcrawler aimed it at the sky. Inside, the 'crawler's floor was sharply tilted, and the rain pounding through the open hatchway slicked the floor until it was impossible to climb.
Down at the lowermost corner of the rectangular cabin, a boy who seemed to be barely into his teens struggled one-handed to drag a girl not much younger up the steep floor. He had a foamy wad of blood-soaked spray bandage around one upper arm, and he was trying to shove the unconscious girl ahead of him, using the riveted durasteel leg posts of the 'crawler's seats like a ladder. But his injured arm could take no weight; tears streamed down his face as he begged the girl to wake up, wake up, give him a little help because he couldn't get her out and he wouldn't leave her, but if she'd just wake up- Her head lolled, limp. Mace saw she wouldn't be waking up any time soon: she had an ugly scalp wound above her hairline, and her fine golden hair was black and sticky with blood.
Mace leaned in through the hatchway and extended his hand. "All right, son. Just take my hand. Once we get you out of here, then I can-" When the boy looked up, the tearful appeal on his face twisted into instant wild rage, and his plea became a fierce shriek. Mace hadn't noticed the swing-stock blaster rifle slung around his good arm; the first hint of its existence Mace got was a burst of hot plasma past his face. He threw himself backward out the hatch and flattened against the cabin wall while the hatchway vomited blasterfire.
The steamcrawler lurched, the hatch going even higher; his sudden movement had been enough to tip its precarious balance, toppling it toward the precipice.
Mace bared his teeth to the night. With the Force, he seized the steamcrawler and yanked it back into place-but a squeal from above grabbed his attention. In seizing the 'crawler he'd lost his Force-hold on the landslide, and the unstable mound of dirt and rock had begun to shift under the little girl and the two boys, sending them sliding down toward the lava.
Mace calmed his hammering heart and extended one hand; he had to close his eyes for a moment to reassert his control on the slide and stabilize it-but its shift had left it less solid than before. He could hold it for the minute or two it would take the girl and boys to reach the relative safety of the outcrop above, not much more. And now he could feel the 'crawler slowly tilting beneath him, leaning higher and higher toward the point of no return.
From inside the cabin he could hear the boy's terrified curses, and his shrieks about kill all you fragging kornos. Mace's eyes drifted closed.
This filthy war- The boy and the girl in the steamcrawler were about to become casualties of the Summertime War. because when the boy had looked up, he could not see that a Jedi Master had come to his rescue.
He could see only a Korun.
To use the Force to disarm the boy, or persuade him, would break the hold he kept upon the landslide, which might cost the lives of the three children scrambling up its face. To reason with the boy seemed impossible-the boy would know too much about what Balawai can expect at the hands of Korunnai-and it would certainly take longer than they had. To abandon them was not an option.
Once he got the boy moving up the face of the landslide toward the others, he'd be able to bring the girl himself. But how to get the boy out?
Mace spun the situation in his mind: he framed it as a fight for the lives of these five children.
All of them. A fundamental principle of combat: Use what you're given. How you fight depends on whom you fight. His first opponent had been the volcano itself. He'd used the power of the volcano's weapon-the lava, where it had undercut the cliff-to hold that power at bay.
His current opponent was not the boy, but rather the boy's experience of the Summertime War.
Use what you're given.
"Kid?" Mace called, roughening his voice. Making himself sound the way the boy would expect a Korun to sound, adopting a thick upland accent like Chalk's. "Kid: five seconds to toss that blaster out the hatch and come after it, you got." "Never!" the boy screamed from inside. "Never!" "Don't come out, you, and the next thing you see-the last thing you see, ever-is a grenade coming in. Hear me, you?" "Go ahead! I know what happens if we get taken alive!" "Kid-already got the others, don't I? The girl. Urno and Nykl. Gonna leave them all alone, you? With me?" There came a pause.
Mace said into the silence, "Sure, go ahead and die. Any coward can do that. Guts enough to live for a while, you got?" He was moderately sure that a thirteen-year-old boy who'd load up four other children and set out in a steamcrawler across the Korunnai Highland at night-a boy who'd rather die than leave an unconscious girl behind-had guts enough for just about anything.
A second later, he was proven right.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU From this doorway, I can see a spray of brilliant white flares-headlamps of three, no, wait, four steamcrawlers-climbing the spine of the fold, heading for the broken track.
Heading for us.
Dawn will come in an hour. I hope we'll all live that long.
The eruptions have subsided, and the rain has trailed off to an intermittent patter. We've shifted some things around in the bunker. The three younger children are curled up on scavenged blankets in the back, asleep. Besh and Chalk now lie near the Thunderbolt, where I can keep an eye on them; I'm not at all sure that one of these children might not try to do them some harm. Terrel, a boy of thirteen who seems to be their natural leader, is remarkably fierce, and he still does not entirely believe that I'm not planning to torture all five of them to death. Yet even on Haruun Kal, boys are still boys: every time he stops worrying about being tortured to death, he starts pestering me to let him fire the Thunderbolt.
I wonder what Nick would say about these civilians. Are they a myth, too? Now all my work in cleaning up this compound does not seem pointless; the children have been through enough tonight without having to see what had been done to the people who'd lived here.
Without having to see the kind of thing that has probably been done to people they know, at their outpost.
Possibly even to their parents.
I can't consider such questions right now. Right now, all I seem to be able to do is stare past the twisted jags of durasteel that once had been this bunker's door, watching the steamcrawlers' upward creep.
I don't need any hints from the Force to have a bad feeling about this.
In dejarik, there is a classic manuver called the fork, where a player moves a single holomonster into position to attack two or more of his opponent's, so that no matter which 'monster the opponent moves to safety, the other will be eaten. Caught in the fork, one's only choice is which piece to lose. The word has come to symbolize situations where the only choice to be made is a choice of disasters.
We are well and truly forked.
I know who these steamcrawlers are bringing: jungle prospectors from the same outpost as the children, fleeing the same ULF guerrillas whose attack had forced the children away- probably the same band that destroyed this outpost. I got the story from Terrel, while I was tending to his broken arm and the girl's scalp wound.
Their outpost had been the next one on this track, some seventy klicks to the north and east. They had come under attack by the ULF at dusk; Terrel's father had given him the task of gathering the other children and driving them to safety.
They'd had no way to know that the ULF had been to this outpost first.
Terrel's arm had been broken by either a bullet or a grenade fragment; he wasn't sure which.
He told me proudly how he managed the dual-stick controls of the steamcrawler with only one hand, and how he had crashed into grassers as he broke through the Korun skirmish line, and how he was pretty sure he'd managed to run down "at least five or six fragging kornos." He says such things defiantly, as if daring me to hurt him for it.
As if I ever would.
The older girl, Keela, has the most serious injury. In the steam-crawler's tumble down the gully, she was thrown from her seat. She has a skull fracture and a severe concussion. I was able to salvage a spare medpac from the 'crawler before it went over the precipice. She's in no grave danger, now, so long as she remains quiet and gets a few days' rest. The medpac had a new bone stabilizer, so Terrel's arm should heal nicely. The younger children-Urno and Nykl and the brave little girl Pell-have nothing worse than a few bruises, and scraped hands and knees from scrambling up the landslide.
So far.
I have not bothered to maintain my pretense of belonging to the guerrillas, though I have also avoided explaining who I really am. The children seem to have decided that I'm a bounty hunter, since I don't "act like a korno"-which is to say, I haven't tortured and killed them, as they were all half expecting, based on the tales they've heard from their parents. As they were all half expecting despite being alive right now only because I saved them. They have decided, based on their vast experience of bounty hunters-courtesy of countless half-cred holo-dramas-that Besh and Chalk are my prisoners, and that I'm going to deliver them to Pelek Baw for a big reward.
I have not disabused them of this notion. It's easier to believe than the truth.
But what should be merely a childish fancy has become unexpectedly complicated and painful; even the kindest illusion will often cut deeper than any truth. One of the younger boys- rather arbitrarily-decided that I must be "just about the greatest bounty hunter there is." A six- year-old's instinctive reaction, I suppose. Soon, he got into a heated discussion with his brother, who insisted that "everybody knows" Jango Fett is the greatest living bounty hunter. Which led the first boy to ask me if,' am Jango Fett.
I cannot help but wonder: if I had told them I'm a Jedi, who might this boy assume I am?
I was saved from answering by a scornful declaration fromTerrel."He ain't Jango Fett, stupid. Jango Fett's dead. Everybody knows that!" "Jango Fett is not dead! He is not!" Tears began to well in the little boy's eyes, and he appealed to me. "Jango Fett ain't dead, is he? Tell him. Tell him he ain't dead." At first, all I could think to say was "I'm sorry." And I was. I am. But the truth is the truth.
"I'm sorry, but yes," I told them. "Jango Fett is dead." "See?" Terrel said with terrible thirteen-year-old scorn." "Course he is, stupid. Some stinkin' Jedi snuck up behind him and stabbed him in the back with one of them laser swords." Somehow this hurt even more. "It didn't happen that way. Fett was. killed in a fight." "Tusker poop," Terrel declared. "No stinkin' Jedi could've took Jango Fett face to face! He was the best." With this I could not argue; I could only contend that Fett had not been stabbed in the back.
"What d'you know about it? Was you there?" I could not-still cannot-bring myself to tell them just how there I had been.
And I cannot properly describe the wound Terrel's tone has opened within me: the way he says stinking Jedi tells me more than I want to know about what Depa has done to our Order's name on this planet. It was not so long ago that every adventurous boy and girl would have dreamed of being a Jedi.
Now their heroes are bounty hunters.
The line of steamcrawlers has halted half a kilometer below us-where the lava wash took out the track. This won't stop them for long; when the cliff collapsed, it made a natural dam across the break. In the hours since the eruption, I would guess that the lava has penetrated the rocks and dirt, and cooled enough to stabilize the slide. Intelligently cautious, they're testing its integrity before attempting to cross. But I know they'll make it. Then what will I do?
It seems I have no choices left. Surrender is not an option. To save Besh and Chalk-not to mention myself-I'll have to hold the children hostage.
This is how far I have fallen, even I, a Jedi Master. This is what a few days in this war has brought me to: threatening the lives of children I would give my own to save.
And if these Balawai call my bluff?
The best outcome I can then foresee: these children will have to watch as their parents, or their parents' friends, are killed by a Jedi.
Best outcome-the phrase is itself a mockery. On Haruun Kal, there seems to be no such thing.
Forked.
And yet, in dejarik, one doesn't get forked by accident. It's the result of a mistake in play.
But where was my mistake that left us here?
Glow rods below. They've left the steamcrawlers and are advancing on foot. No one has called out. They will have tried to raise this outpost on comm; getting no answer, they'll approach with caution. I wouldn't be surprised if those glow rods are lashed to long sticks, to see if they draw sniper fire.
There are a lot of them.
Now, in desperation, I can only do as I always have, when I have faced impossible situations: I turn to Yoda's teachings for advice and inspiration. I can summon in my mind his wise green eyes, and imagine the tilt of his wrinkled head. I can hear his voice: If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are. a different game you should play.
Yes. A different game. I need a different game. New rules. New objectives. And I need it in about thirty seconds.
Terrel? Terrel, come up here. All of you. Pell, wake up the boys. We're going to play a game.
[the voice of a boy, faintly]: "What kind of game?" A new game. I just made it up. It's called Nobody Else Dies Today.
[another boy's voice, faintly]: "I was 'sleep. "S this gonna be a fun game?" Only if we win.
GAMES IN THE DARK L hese Balawai may have been irregulars, but they were both expe rienced and disciplined.
Their recon squad entered the ruined com pound in three teams of two, spread over 120 degrees of arc to giv them overlapping fields of fire. While glow rods still waved halfwa along the slope below, these six entered in total silence and dee shadow. They must have had some kind of night-vision equipmem if the Force hadn't let Mace feel the stark threat of their weapon: points of aim, he wouldn't have known they were there.
He stood in impenetrable shadow, looking out between th twisted jags of durasteel that were the remnants of the bunker's dooi He could feel a darkness deeper than the night gathering upon th compound like fog rising from damp ground. The darkness soakd in through his pores and pounded inside his head like a black mi graine.
There had never been light bright enough to drive back darknes like this; Mace could only hope to make of himself a light brigh enough to cut through it.
,' am the blade, he told himself silently.,' will have to be; there is n other.
"Terrel," he said softly. "They're here. Go ahead, son." "You're sure? I can't see anything," Terrel said from beside him. He wiped his nose, then made fists as though he were holding on to his courage with both hands. "I can't see anything at all." "They will be able to see you," Mace said. "Call out." "Okay." Staying in the shadows, he repeated, "Okay," but this time in a loud call. "Okay, hey, don't shoot, okay? Don't shoot! It's me!" The night went silent. Mace felt six weapons trained on the bunker door. He murmured, "Tell them who you are." "Yeah, uh, hey listen, it's Terrel, huh? Terrel Nakay. Is my dad out there?" A woman's voice came out of the darkness to Mace's left, shrill with hope. "Terrel? Oh, Terrel! Is Keela with you-?" The girl with the head wound held Pell and the two boys well back from the doorway, but when she heard the woman's voice she started unsteadily to her feet. "Don't go out there," Mace said. "And keep the smaller children still. We don't want anyone shot by accident." She nodded and sank back to her knees, calling out, "Mom, I'm here! I'm okay!" "Keela! Keela-Keela-is Pell with you?" A man shouted from the center, "Quiet!" "Rankin, it's Terrel and Keela! Didn't you hear them? Keela, what about Pell-" "Hold your position, you stupid nerf! And shut up!" the man snarled. His voice was ragged: angry, exhausted, and desperate. "We don't know who else is here! This place is completely fragged." "Rankin-" "They could be bait. Shut your mouth before I shoot you myself." Mace nodded to himself. He would have suspected the same thing.
"Terrel?" The man called out in a much softer tone: warily calm. "Terrel, it's Pek Rankin.
Come on out where we can see you." Terrel looked at Mace. Mace said, "You know him?" The boy nodded. "He's-sort of a friend of my dad's. Sort of." "Go on, then," Mace said gently. "Move slowly. Keep your hands in plain sight, away from your body." Terrel did. Out from the bunker door, feeling his way down the grade toward the shattered huts. "Can somebody put on a light? I can't see." "In a minute," Rankin's voice replied from the darkness. "Keep on coming this way, Terrel.
You'll be all right. What happened to your 'crawler? How come you don't answer comm?
Where are the other kids?" "We had an accident. But we're okay. We're all okay. Okay?" Terrel caught his foot on a rock and stumbled. "Ow! Hey, the light, huh? I got one broken arm already." "Just keep walking toward my voice. Are you alone? Where are the other kids?" "In the bunker. But they can't come out," Terrel said. "And you can't go in." "Why's that?" Mace said, "Because I'm in here." In the Force he felt their tension ratchet up, sharp as an indrawn breath. After a moment, Rankin's voice came out of the darkness. "And who might you be?" "You don't need to know." "Is that so? Why don't you step out where we can get a look at you?" "Because the temptation to take a shot at me might prove overwhelming," Mace said. "Any bolts that miss will be bouncing around the inside of this bunker. Where there are four more innocent children." A new man's voice rang out from the right, thin with fear and anger. "Two of those kids are my sons-if you hurt them-" "All I have done," Mace said, "is tend their injuries and keep them sheltered. What happens to them now depends on you." "He's telling the truth!" Terrel called. "He didn't hurt us-he saved us. He's okay. Really.
He's just afraid you'll shoot him 'cause he's a korno!" A burst of low, half-strangled profanity came from the right.
Terrel called hastily, "But he's not a real korno. He just looks like one. He talks almost like a regular person-and he's like, like a, a bounty hunter, or something." His voice trickled off, leaving a silence empty and ominous. Mace felt currents of intention shifting and winding through the Force; the Balawai must have been consulting in whispers on comm.
Finally, Rankin called out once more. "So? What drr "QU want?" "I want you to take these children and go away from nere." "Huh? What else?" "That's all. Just take the children and go." "Well. Aren't you generous," Rankin said, dry. Bitter. "Listen, I'm gonna make a light.
Nobody get twitchy. I don't want to get fragged, okay?" Mace said, "Light will be welcome." Yellow-white glo1 ared behind a slab of tumbled wall, and a cell-powered glow flipping through the air to land not far from Terrel's fee — _ced, and rolled to a stop. Its half globe of up-angled light stretched the surrounding shadows toward the sky, painting them even darker.
Terrel held a hand at his chin to shade his eyes. "Hey, don't make me stand around alone out here, huh?" "Come on over here, boy." A man stepped into view, moving slowly into the light. He held a blaster rifle in one hand, its barrel slanting dowvi, carefi " cted at the ground beside him. His other hand was up and forv,^ ^alm out. His clothing was scorched and stained, and one whole side of his head bore a clotted mass of spray bandage, the foam covering one eye. From his voice, this was Rankin. "Get yourself under cover,'' Terrel looked back up at the bunker. Mace said, "Go ahead, son." The voice of the man who'd claimed to be the boys' father snarled from the darkness. "Don't call him son, korno! You're not his father! Your stinkin' kind killed his father-" "Stow that garbage!" Rankin barked, but too late: Terrel's face crumpled in tragic disbelief.
"Dad?" he said, sounding stunned and lost. "My dad?" If eyes could shoot blaster bolts, Rankin's would have killed the man. "Get him out of here," he said. Another man, also wounded, stepped far enough into the light to fold Terrel in his arms and draw him away into the ring of darkness.
"Listen," Rankin said, looking up at the dark jagged mouth of the bunker. "I guess you don't want the children hurt. Neither do we. But we've got a serious problem here, okay? We got our butts shot off tonight. O '' homes are destroyed. Half the people I know on this whole planet are dead. Those 'crawlers are stuffed with wounded, and we've got a load of kornos on our tails. We can't just go, get it? We can't. We need a place to hole up till dawn, that's all." "You can't stay here," Mace said. "There are ULF guerrillas on their way here right now.
Look at where you are. This place couldn't stand against them when it was intact." "It doesn't have to. Gunships fly at dawn. We can hold out till then." "You don't understand-" "Maybe I don't. So? Not your problem, is it?" "I have made it my problem," Mace said grimly. "You have no idea what this place is. What it has become." "You know what happened here?" Rankin waved his rifle at the shattered huts. "Where is everybody?" "Dead," Mace said. "Killed by the ULF. All of them." "I don't think so. Where are the bodies? Think I've never seen a ULF action? I know the kind of things they do to our dead." "Forget the bodies." Mace tried to massage the pain from his temple with the heel of one hand. How could the simple decency of burying the dead turn against him? "If you're here when the guerrillas arrive, they'll kill all of you, too. You care about your children's lives? Get them out of here." "Hey, he didn't say us," said the father's voice from the darkness. "You catch that, Pek? "Kill all of you,' he says. You catch that?" "Shut up." Rankin didn't even glance in the father's direction. "Then why haven't you sent out the other kids already?" "Because I don't know when the ULF will get here," Mace said impatiently. "This is the only place I can defend them. And if I had sent them out already, you'd have no reason to listen to me, would you? I'd be just another korno. One of you would have opened fire, and by now people would be dead. That's what I'm trying to avoid. Don't you understand? We don't have time to argue. On grassers, they can move as fast as a steamcrawler. Faster. They could be here right now, watching you from the jungle-" Rankin shook his head. "That's why we need that bunker, you follow? We gotta get our wounded where we can protect them-" "You can't protect them!" Mace's fists clenched until his fingernails drew blood from his palms. Why wouldn't they understand? He could feel the dark closing in upon them all like a strangler's noose. "Listen to me. This bunker couldn't help the people who lived here, and it can't help you. Your only hope is to take your kids and your wounded and run. All of you: run." "Some kinda stinkin' funny korno," the father's voice said from the shadows. "What's he so worried about us for?" "That's not your business," Mace said. "Your business is to get yourself, your people, and these five children out of this place without anyone dying." "Maybe he's just tryin' to keep us out here where the stinkin' kornos can get us-" "Didn't I tell you to shut upT Rankin angled his good eye up toward the bunker. "You're askin' us to take a lot on faith, from some guy we can't even see." "You don't need to see me. All you need to see is this." With a twitch of the Force, Mace squeezed the Thunderbolt's trigger. A single packet of energy screamed into the sky and burst in a spherical flash of scarlet as it entered a low cloud. "That could as easily have been your head.
I know exactly where you are. All six of you." He paused for a second to let that sink in. "If I wanted you hurt, we wouldn't be talking.
You'd already be dead." The truth of this wiped Rankin's face clean of expression. Mace watched it hit home, and had just enough time to think that this might actually work- Then streaks of blasterfire lit up the slope below.
The jungle thundered with scarlet explosions, multiple bolts flashing from the cover of steamcrawlers to shatter branches and blow rocks to splinters. The bursts were instantly echoed by smaller, whiter flares under the trees, crackling like a bonfire built of green logs: muzzle flashes.
Slugthrowers.
Shouts and screams from human throats underscored the whine of blasters and the shrieks of slugs hurtling in ricochets off steam-crawler armor.
"What did I tell you?" the father shrieked from the darkness. "What did I te,'/you? He kept us yapping and now we're getting killed down there-,'" "Don't do nothing stupid!" Rankin shouted. He hunched over in the glow rod's spill, his face desperate and frightened: a jacklighted ur-stag. "Look, nobody do nothing-" "Rankin!" The Force gave Mace's voice the thunder of a signal cannon. "Pull your people back. A fighting retreat. Have them pull back here to the compound." Below, a steamcrawler's turret gun spewed a stream of flame across an arc of jungle. Blood- colored light licked the bunker's ceiling.
"You said coming up here can't help us-" "It can't. I can. Do it. It's your only chance." Behind Mace, one of the boys had started to cry, and now the other one joined him. Pell said, "Mister? That's my mom out there." Her underlip twitched and her eyes welled. "Don't let them hurt her, okay? Don't let nobody hurt her." Keela gathered Pell into her arms. "She'll be okay. Don't worry. She'll be okay." Her eyes begged Mace to make this true.
Mace stared down at them, thinking that if it were up to him, no one would hurt anyone.
Anywhere. Ever. He said only, "Hang on. Be brave." Pell sniffled and nodded solemnly.
Outside, Rankin was shouting into his comlink."-no, blast it! Up here. Flares and flame projectors. Light 'em up and slow 'em down-and get those 'crawlers in gear!" "Rankin, don't!" the father shouted. "Don't you get it? Once we're up here, he can crossfire our butts from the bunker!" "Don't be stupid-" "Space your don't-be-stupid talk! You know what's stupid? Talking to that korno like he's a human being! Believing one fraggin' word he says, that's stupid! Want to talk to the kornos?
Talk with your gun." A star burst to life below and shot high into the air: a flare. It hung below the clouds, lighting the steamcrawlers, the jungle, and the outpost stark actinic white. Mace had to shield his eyes against the sudden glare, and he heard the father's harsh cry of triumph, and the Force snapped his lightsaber to his hand and brought the blade to life as a blaster rifle sang a rhythm fast as a hand could squeeze.
The father was no marksman; no bolt would have come within arm's length of Mace-but they would have bounced into the bunker. Amethyst light flashed to meet the red, and instead every bolt screamed away into the sky.
Mace stood in the doorway, looking down at Rankin's awestruck face past the guard angle of his lightsaber's blade. Rankin's mouth moved in breathless silence: Jedi.
Mace thought: Looks like we lose.
"Keela," Mace said without turning, his voice tight but dead level. "Get the children to the back. Lie down behind the bodies of the Korunnai: they are your best cover." "What?" Keela stared at him blankly. "What? Who are you?" From outside, the father's voice roared, "That's a Jedi!" An instant later, it was joined by another voice: higher, half broken, hoarse with grief, betrayal, and wild rage.
"A stinkin" Jedi! He's a stinkin" Jedi! Kill him! Kill him!" The voice was Terrel's.
The Force moved Mace's hands faster than thought. Depa's lightsaber went to his left hand, to mirror his own in his right, and together they wove a wall across the mouth of the bunker, catching and scattering a flood of blasterfire.
Bolts splintered off in all directions; the erratic staccato of badly aimed shots took all his concentration and skill to intercept. Mace sank deeper and deeper into the Force, surrendering more and more of his conscious thought to the instinctive whirl of Vaapad, and even so some bolts slipped past him and whanged randomly around the inside of the bunker.
He was too deep in Vaapad to make a plan, too deep even to think, but he was a Jedi Master: he didn't have to think.
He knew.
If he stayed in this doorway, the children would die.
One step at a time, to give the shooters time to adjust their aim, Mace leaned into the gale of blasterfire and started down the exposed slope below the door. His blades flashing in blinding whirls of jungle green and sundown purple, spraying a spiked fan of deflected bolts toward the smoke-shrouded stars, he drew their fire down, away from the bunker's door. Away from their own children.
One step, then another.
He was aware, in an abstract, disconnected way, of an ache in his arms and the salt sting of sweat trickling into his eyes. He was aware of hot slashes of blaster grazes along his flanks, and of a chunk that had been torn from one thigh by a glancing hit. All these meant less to him than the new vectors of fire as he continued his relentless march and the jups broke from cover. He was also aware that not all the jups were shooting; he heard Rankin's desperate orders to cease fire, and felt in the Force an irrational blood hunger that kept the others squeezing triggers until their weapons began to smoke.
A blood hunger fed by the dark.
No. Not blood hunger.
Blood fever.
He felt people moving on all sides of him, new people, shooting and shouting and stumbling among the shattered huts. He felt their panic and fierce rage and the breathless desperation of their retreat. Massive shadows loomed in the Force, lumbering behemoths that roared with voices of fire: steamcrawlers backing into the ruined compound, treads crushing tumbled slabs of prefab walls, grinding the dirt over graves that Mace had dug only hours before.
The compound flooded with smoke and flame, with flashes of blaster bolts and snarls of hypersonic slugs. Mace paced through it all with relentless calm, his only expression a slight frown of concentration, his blades weaving an impenetrable web of lightning. He gave more and more of himself over to the Force, letting it move his hands, his feet, letting it guide him through the battle.
The dark power he had felt gather in the Force now rose around him to swallow the stars; it broke over him in a wave that pushed him down and caught him up and when he felt a hostile presence lunge toward his back he whirled with effortless speed and amethyst light splashed fire through the long durasteel blade of a knife held in a small hand. A sliced-off piece skittered across the ground and green energy dropped like an ax for the kill- And stopped, trembling- One centimeter above a brown-haired head.
Brown hairs curled, crisped, and blackened in green fire. A stub of knife, its new-cut edge still glowing hot, dropped from a nerveless hand. Stunned brown eyes, streaming tears that sparkled with brilliant green highlights, stared up at him from either side of Depa's blade.
"Stinkin','i? fz,"Terrel sobbed. "Go on an' kill me. Go on an' kill everybody-" "You're not safe out here," Mace said. He threw himself backward and with a shove of the Force sent Terrel skidding toward the door of the bunker. A jet of flame howled through the space where they had stood.
Mace rolled to his feet, blades angled defensively before him, looking up at the looming turret gun of a steamcrawler as it traversed to track him. Someone inside had decided it would be worth Terrel's life to take out Mace. Mace didn't much care for that kind of math. He had a different equation in mind.
Four steamcrawlers divided by one Jedi equals one huge smoking pile of scrap.
The shatterpoints of the 'crawlers were obvious: neither the linked treads nor the traverse gears that rotated the turrets would stand against a single swipe of a lightsaber. In less than a second apiece, he could turn these armored behemoths into nothing more than hollow metal rocks-but he didn't.
Because that wouldn't hurt enough.
He wanted to hurt them worse than this black migraine was hurting him.
These people had attacked him when all he wanted was to help them. When he had been trying to save them. They had attacked him without regard for their own lives, or the lives of their children. They'd almost made him kill one of their children himself.
They were stupid. They were evil. They deserved to be punished.
They deserved to die.
He saw it all in a single burst of image: a memory of something that hadn't happened yet. He saw himself dive headfirst under the steamcrawler and flip to his back, his twin blades carving through the 'crawler's lightly armored undercarriage. He'd come up in the passenger compartment, where one or two armed men might be guarding the wounded; he'd use their own blasterfire to take them out. Then cut his way into the cabin, take out the driver-then he'd wash the compound in flame projected from the steamcrawler's turret gun; the jups on foot would run and shriek as they burned. Then he would use the Force to flip his lightsabers through the air to carve gaps in the armor of the other steamcrawler, gaps through which his turret gun would pour flame, roasting drivers and passengers and wounded-thick meat-scented smoke would billow out the hatches.
They'd all die. Every single one of them.
It wouldn't take him a full minute.
And he'd enjoy it.
He was already running toward the steamcrawler, gathering himself for the headlong dive, when he finally thought, What am I doing?
He barely managed to turn his dive into a spring instead. He flipped upward through the air to land poised on the steamcrawler's outer deck beside the flame-gun turret. He let himself fall prone to the deck, using its bulk to cover him against blasterfire from the Balawai on the ground, and his whole body sagged as he tried to pull his mind back out from the Force.
It was too dark here. Too dark everywhere: thick and blinding, choking like the black smoke plume from the volcano's mouth above. He could find no light at all except the red flame that burned in his heart. His head pounded as though he were the one with fever wasps hatching inside his brain. As though his skull were cracking open.
Fatigue and pain rushed him, barreling him toward unconscious ness; drawing upon the Force to sustain himself drew in rage as well. He clung to the 'crawler's deck, pressing his face into the hot bullet-scarred armor. Every second he could hold himself still was another second for some of these men and women to live.
A howl welled up inside him: a roar of dark fury raised to the level of exaltation. He locked his teeth against it, but it rang in his ears anyway, echoing across the mountainside like akks calling with the voice of the blood fever itself- Mace's breath caught in his throat. A voice inside him-how could it echo?
He raised his head.
That howling was akk voices after all.
They came up from the jungle, climbing the steep lava-cut sides of the outcrop, massive claws gouging furrows in the stone. Five, eight, a dozen: gigantic, armored, cowl spines bristling in full threat display, white foamy ropes of slaver looping from the corners of their dagger- toothed mouths.
Heavily armed Balawai fell back before them. The akks moved with the deliberate speed of creatures who had nothing to fear. Steamcrawler turret guns hosed them down with flame; they ignored it. They shrugged aside the minor stings of blaster hits. When they reached the crown of the outcrop, they began to pace around the outpost's perimeter, circling the shattered huts; their pace became a trot, then a gallop: a ring of armored predator, gradually tightening.
Mace recognized akk herding behavior: as though the Balawai were unruly grassers, the akks were forcing them into a single crowd in the central common area of the compound like a corral, working by pure intimidation. Any Balawai who tried to escape the ring was slammed back into it by the twitch of a massive shoulder or the sweep of an armored tail. No akk put its teeth on human flesh; even one jup who fired his rifle point blank into an akk's throat- uselessly-received only a buffet from jaws that could as easily have bitten him in half.
Mace felt the dark thunder rising in the Force and he knew: the compound hadn't become a corral. It had become a slaughter pen.
A killing ground.
And then he felt the shadow of the butcher.
Mace looked upslope: there he was, standing on the rock above the bunker's door.
A Korun.
In the Force, he burned with power.
Huge: his sweat-glistening bare chest could have been fused together from granite boulders.
His shaven skull gleamed more than two meters above his bare feet. His pants were crudely sewn from a vine cat's pelt. He raised arms like a spacescraper's buttresses over his head.
To each forearm was strapped some kind of shield: elongated teardrops of a mirror-polished metal. Their wide-curved ends extended around his massive fists, and they tapered to needle points a handspan behind his elbows.
Veins writhed in his forearms as his fists tightened. The edges of the shields blurred, and a high evil whine resonated in Mace's teeth.
The akk dogs turned to the man as though this were some kind of signal. As one, dogs and man together lifted their heads to the smothered stars and unleashed another dark blood-fever howl. It hummed in Mace's chest, and he felt the echoing answer it drew from his own rage, and he finally understood.
The rage wasn't all his.
His blood fever was an answer his heart gave to the call of the jungle. To the howl of the akks.
To the power of this man.
The Balawai had not run here of their own will; they had been driven here, herded to ground that had been soaked in violence and malice and savage blood fever only days before. What had been done in this place had been deliberate, the dark mirror image of a religious sanctification. The massacre here had been only a preparation, to prime the jungle for this dark rite.
Mace knew him now: this must be the lorpelek.
This was Kar Vaster.
His arms swept downward, and from beyond the ring of circling akks leapt six Korunnai, springing as high as Jedi but without Jedi grace. The Force thrust that propelled them felt like a grunt of pain. They flailed as though they clawed their way through the air, but they landed coiled, balanced, crouched to attack. All six were dressed identically to Vastor, and each bore those twin teardrop shields that snarled like overdriven comm speakers.
The Balawai met them with a storm of blasterfire. Bolts flashed and splattered and splintered upward into the clouds as the twin shields each man bore moved faster than thought.
The Balawai stopped firing.
Not a single Korun had fallen. Their flashing shields had intercepted every bolt.
They could only have learned this from a Jedi.
From one particular Jedi.
Oh, no, Mace thought.
Oh, Depa, no.
On the rock above, the lor pelek spread his corded arms, leaning out over the drop, toppling as though he thought he could fly-then at the last instant he sprang forward into a dive that carried him toward the center of the crowd of Balawai, where they massed around the steamcrawlers.
The killing began.
LOR PELEK T, he Korunnai waded in without waiting for Vastor to land. They sprang among the mass of Balawai and swung those teardrop shields in short, vicious arcs, angled flat as though to cut with their edges- And cut they did.
Their sizzling edges bit through blasters with tooth-grinding squeals; they slashed through flesh with a meaty squelch, and the blood on them shivered to mist. Scarlet clouds trailed them like smoke. Mace saw a man cut in half, and the shield came out his other side still shining like an ultrachrome mirror.
Shining like a vibro-ax.
Vastor touched down in the middle of the compound and rolled out of his fall without slowing. He flashed into an inhumanly fast sprint toward the very steamcrawler atop which Mace lay. Vastor's sprint became a headlong dive that carried him sliding between the treads.
The steamcrawler's armor hummed under Mace's hands, and a harsher squeal joined the chorus of snarling shields; he had to bite back an obscenity he'd learned from Nick.
Vastor was cutting through the 'crawler's undercarriage.
Had he stolen that dark dream right out of Mace's head?
Mace popped to his feet and both his lightsabers hummed to life. He felt Vaster in the Force: a torch that flared with darkness. He was almost through the undercarriage; once inside, he'd be loose among the wounded. The Force showed him how the wounded men and women inside the crawler had already pressed themselves away from the shining blades that sliced upward from below.
Mace decided it was time he introduced himself to this lor pelek.
He sprang into the air, flipping high over the steamcrawler's turret to land on its flat mid-deck armor directly above Vaster. A twitch of the Force reversed his grips so that the lightsabers' blades projected downward from his fists. Then he dropped to his knees, twisting to swing the blades in a circle around him.
A vibroshield is not the only thing that can cut steamcrawler armor.
A disk of that armor-edges still glowing from the lightsabers' cuts, Mace still kneeling in its center-dropped straight down like a free-falling turbolift.
Mace heard one explosive obscenity from below before he and the disk of armor flattened Kar Vaster like a fusion-powered pile driver.
The interior of the steamcrawler was crowded with wounded men and women. One of them brandished a heavy blaster; Mace slashed it in two with a flip of his lightsaber. "No shooting," he said, and the Force made his words into a command that sent several other blasters clattering to the floor.
Vaster lay pinned facedown to the deck, half stunned.
Mace leaned close to his ear. "Kar Vaster, I am Mace Windu. Stand down. That's an order." A twitch of the Force was his only warning, but for Mace it was more than he needed. He threw himself into a back flip a quarter of a second before the disk of armor slammed upward to smash against the ceiling with a deafening clank. Before it could fall again, Vaster was on his feet. Then as the disk dropped, an ultrachrome flame licked through it, slicing it in half.
The pieces rattled back down through the hole Vaster had cut in the undercarriage.
Vaster faced Mace across the hole. Darkness pulsed at Mace through the Force, but on the,'orfe,'ek's face was not anger, but instead inhuman focus: a primal ferocity like a krayt dragon surprised over the corpse of a bantha.
The way he had shrugged Mace off, the slicing of the armor disk: a predator's dominance display.
He raised his shield-clad hands in salute and rumbled something in a language that Mace didn't recognize-it didn't even sound like language at all: more like the growls and snarls of jungle beasts.
But as Vaster spoke, some power of the lor fe,'ek's unfurled his meaning inside Mace's mind.
Mace Windu, the lor pelek had said. An honor. Why do you interfere in my kill?
"There is no kill," Mace said. "Do you understand me? No kill. No more killing." Vastor's smile was disbelieving. No? Then what do you propose? Shall we lay down our arms? He beckoned invitingly with one sizzling shield. You first.
The zings of blaster ricochets and the roar of steamcrawler turret guns came clearly through the gaps in the 'crawler's armor. "No unnecessary killing," Mace amended. "No more massacres." Vastor's response had a quality of animal directness, straightforward and uncomplicated.
Massacres are necessary, doshalo.
"You and I are not doshallai." Mace angled his lightsabers in a defensive X. "You are no clan brother of mine." Vaster shrugged. Where are Besh and Chalk?
"In the bunker," Mace answered without thinking, his mind still whirling around the concept of a necessary massacre.
Vaster swept the wounded men and women in the steamcrawler's cabin with a contemptuous glare. These will keep, doshalo. They cannot escape. Follow me. With a rush of the Force, he sprang straight upward through the hole Mace had cut.
That same rush of the Force tugged at Mace's will, inclining him to follow without thinking- but he understood now the power of this place, and of Vaster himself.
"You'll have to do better than that," Mace muttered.
He turned his attention to the terrified Balawai around him. He gestured, and all the discarded blasters flipped from the deck to hang in midair; with a single swift flourish he sliced every one of them in half, then cast their pieces out the hole. "Listen to me, all of you. You must surrender. It is your only hope." "Hope of what?" a man said bitterly. His face was gray; he wore a bacta patch over a chest wound and clutched the stump of his wrist just above a wad of spray bandage that served him for a tourniquet. "We know what happens if we're captured." "Not this time," Mace said: "If you fight, they will kill you. If you surrender I can keep you alive. And I will." "We're supposed to just take your word for it?" "I am a Jedi Master." The man spat blood on the deck. "We know what that's worth." "Obviously you don't." In the Force, Mace felt the dark flame that was the lor pelek fighting his way upslope toward the bunker. For an instant he was almost grateful-he'd be happy to leave the defense of Chalk and Besh in Vastor's hands-but then he remembered the children.
The children were still inside.
Where Vastor was going.
Massacres are necessary.
"I won't argue." Mace moved to the rim of the hole Vastor had cut, and looked up through the one he'd cut himself, judging his clearance. "Fight to a sure death, or surrender to a hope of life. The choice is yours," he said, and threw himself upward into the burning night.
The whole compound was on fire: choking black smoke swirled above blazing lakes of flame-projector fuel. Blaster bolts flashed through every angle, their bursts an arrhythmic drumbeat under the howling chorus of the Korun shield-weapons. Vastor bounded up the slope toward the bunker in erratic zigzagging leaps, his shields flashing: catching stray bolts, carving metal, slashing flesh.
Mace dived from the top of the steamcrawler, flipped in the air, and hit the ground running.
His blades wove a green and purple corona of power that splintered blasterfire into the sky.
A knot of Balawai huddled on their knees a few meters to the left of Mace's path, their hands finger-laced on the backs of their heads. Eyes closed against the horror around them, they screamed for mercy to a gore-smeared Korun whose face held nothing human. The Korun raised twin shields shrilling over his head, and with a roar of dark exultation he plunged them toward defenseless necks- But before he could land the blow, the sole of a boot slammed his spine so hard that he flipped completely over and landed on his head.
The Korun sprang to his feet, unhurt and raging. "Kick me? Gonna die, you! Gonna die-" He stopped, because to move another centimeter would have brought his nose in contact with the rock-steady purple lightsaber blade poised in front of his face. At the other end of that blade stood Mace Windu.
"Yes, I will," he said. "But not today." The Korun's expression curdled like sour grasser milk. "Must be the Windu Jedi, you," he said in Koruun. "Depa's sire." The word gave Mace a twinge; in Koruun, sire could mean either "master" or "father." Or both. He spoke in his rusty Koruun. "Don't kill not-fighters, you. Kill not-fighters andjyow die." The Korun snorted. "Talk like a Balawai, you," he spat in Basic. "Don't take your orders, I." Mace twitched his lightsaber. The Korun's eyes flickered. Mace returned to Basic as well.
"If you want to live, believe what I say: what happens to them will happen to you." "Tell it to Kar Vastor," the Korun sneered.
"I intend to." Before the Korun could reply, Mace whirled and sprang for the bunker's door.
Mace didn't trouble with the distractions that had made Vastor's path jag like a bolt of lightning; he went straight for the door's shattered gape as though launched from a cannon. He reached it only steps behind the larger man.
And froze.
Froze despite the chilling whine of those teardrop shields, despite Vastor's rumbling snarl like the hunting-cough of a hungry vine cat. Despite a sound Mace could no more ignore than he could reverse the rotation of the planet: the shrieks of children screaming in terror.
The burning compound below lit the bunker's ceiling with shifting light the color of blood, casting Mace's shadow huge and wavering, indistinct but utterly black: a shadow that shrouded all within. The only light that fell upon the core of his shadow was the unnatural wash of mingled green and purple glare from his lightsabers.
Vaster stood within, hunched like a gundark, his right arm drawn back to strike. Dangling from hair tangled in Vastor's left fist, feet kicking above the floor, sobbing uncontrollably about how all you stinkin kornos have to die, was Terrel.
"Vastor, stop!" Mace opened himself to the full flood of the Force, and used it to hammer at the lorpeleKs will. "Don't do it, Kar. Put the boy down." He might as well have not bothered; Vastor's answering snarl translated in Mace's mind as When I am done with him. The shield strapped to Vastor's left arm made a mirrored halo over Terrel's head, but now the other angled toward where Besh and Chalk lay. Look there, and see what sort of creature I hold.
"He's not some creature," Mace responded with reflexive certainty. "He's a boy. His name. his name is." His voice trailed away as his eyes finally made sense of what Vastor was pointing at. "Terrel." Besh and Chalk lay on the stone floor midway between where Vastor stood holding Terrel and where Keela, Pell, and the two younger boys cowered. The clothing of the thanatizine- bound Korunnai appeared inexplicably rumpled, even tattered, and over their torsos it glistened a wet oily black. A full second passed before Mace realized that it was the light from his blades that robbed color from the wet gleam on their clothes; he figured it out by the smell, strong even through the reek of the burning compound outside.
It was the smell of blood.
Someone had been hacking, inexpertly but with considerable enthusiasm, at the two helpless Korunnai.
Hacking at two human beings Mace had sworn to protect.
Hacking at sad Besh, who could not speak. Who'd lost his brother only yesterday.
Hacking at fierce Chalk, the girl who had made herself strong enough to survive anything.
Anything but this.
They had lain down in this cold bunker floor and taken into their veins the drug that had swallowed them in a false death, trusting that a Jedi Master would watch over them to prevent a real one.
On the floor below Terrel's dangling feet was a short stub of knife, smeared with the same dark blood. The blade was only half a decimeter long, its tip now a sharp straight slant- Terrel's knife. The one Mace had sliced in half on the slope outside.
Strength drained from Mace's knees. "Oh, Terrel," he said, letting his lightsabers swallow their blades. "Terrel, what have you done?" Don't worry, was the meaning of Vastor's rumbling growl. He won't do it again.
Mace threw himself into a Force-spring, both his blades blazing to life again as he streaked through the darkness toward Vastor's back-and in that instant he saw himself arguing again with Nick on the trail, heard again his orders within this shattered bunker, saw the steamcrawler carrying children teeter at the lip of the precipice, saw Rankin step into the circle of light, faced Vastor inside a steamcrawler crowded with wounded. He couldn't see what he should have done differently-what he could have done differently and remained the Jedi he was-to lead to any moment other than this one: this moment where he knew already he would be too late, too slow, too old and tired, too beaten down by the inexplicable cruelties of jungle war- Too useless to save the life of one single child.
Mace could only roar a futile denial as Vastor struck. The vi-broshield sank deep into Terrel's body. And as the lorpelek ripped the life out of the boy, the blood fever told Mace what he should have done differently. man, only a man; a man of power, to be sure, but no longer the embodiment of the jungle's darkness. Terrel had been a boy, merely a child, yes, but a boy whose dead arms were still wet to the elbow with the blood of Chalk and Besh.
Until now, Mace had looked at them-at this whole world, and all that he had seen within it-with Jedi eyes: seeing abstract patterns of power in the swirling chiaroscuro of the Force, a punctuated rhythm of good and evil. His Jedi eyes had found him only what he'd already been looking for.
Without knowing it, he'd been seeking an enemy. Someone he could fight. Someone who would stand in for this war.
Someone he could blame for it.
Someone he could kill.
Now, though- He looked at Vaster with his own eyes, truly open for the first time.
Vaster looked back intently. After a moment, the lor pelek relaxed with a sigh, lowering his weapons. You have decided to let me live, was the meaning of his wordless grumble. For now.
Mace said, "I am sorry." For what? Vaster looked frankly puzzled. When Mace did not answer, he shrugged. Now that I may safely show you my back, I will go. The fight is over. I must deal with our captives.
He turned toward the bunker's door. Mace spoke to his back. "I won't allow you to kill prisoners." Vaster stopped, glancing back over his shoulder. Who said anything about killing prisoners? One of my men? His eyes took a feral gleam from the light of Mace's blades.
Never mind. I know who it was. Leave him to me.
Without another word, Vaster stalked out into the firelit night.
Mace stood in the flickering dark, his only light the shine from his blades. After a time, his hands went numb on the handgrips' activation plates, and his blades shrank to nothingness.
Now the only light was the bloody glow on the bunker's ceiling cast by the fires outside.
He noted absently that Besh and Chalk hadn't bled much from their wounds. The thanatizine, he guessed.
A low whimper from behind reminded him of the children. He turned and looked down at them. They quivered in a group hug so tight he couldn't see where one child ended and the next began. None of them returned his stare. He could feel their terror through the Force: they were afraid to meet his eyes.
He wanted to tell them that they had nothing to fear, but that would be a lie. He wanted to tell them that he wouldn't let anyone hurt them. That was another lie: he already had. None of them would ever forget seeing their friend killed by a Korun.
None of them would ever forget seeing a Jedi let that Korun walk away.
There were so many things he should say that he could only keep silent. There were so many things he should do that he could only stand holding his powered-down lightsabers.
When all choices seem wrong, choose restraint.
And so he stood motionless.
"Master Windu?" The voice was familiar, but it seemed to come from very far away; or perhaps it was only an echo of memory. "Master Windu!" He stood staring into an invisible distance until a strong hand took his arm. "Hey, Mace!" He sighed. "Nick. What do you want?" "It's almost dawn. Gunships fly with the light. It won't take them long to get here. Time to saddle-" Nick's voice stopped as though he were choking on something. "Frag me. What did you-I mean, what did they-who would-how-?" His voice ran down. Mace finally turned to face the young Korun. Nick stared speechlessly down at the bloody messes that were Besh and Chalk.
"The thanatizine has slowed their hemorrhaging," Mace said softly. "Someone who's good with a medpac's tissue binder might still be able to save their lives." "And-and-and-are those children-?" him to the father of the two young boys. When Mace told him that Urno and Nykl were still alive and as safe as any Balawai here could be, the man burst into tears.
Relief or terror: Mace could not tell.
Tears are tears.
Mace could summon no sympathy for him. He could not forget that this was the man who had fired the first shot into the bunker. Nor could he pass any sort of judgment upon him; he could not say that if this man had held his fire, any of the dead here would instead be alive.
Rankin was not among the captives. Nor was the girls' mother.
Mace knew neither had escaped.
Rankin. Though he and Mace could not have trusted each other, they had been, however briefly, on the same side. They had both been trying to get everyone out of here without anyone dying.
Rankin had paid the price of that failure.
Perhaps Mace had started paying it as well.
One more question to one more captive, and then the akks moved aside for him again.
Vaster was nearby, growling and barking and snarling the Korunnai into groups organized for the withdrawal. In his disconnected state, Mace felt no surprise to discover that he could not now understand the lor pelek. Vastor's voice had become jungle noise, freighted with meaning but indecipherable. Inhuman^ Impersonal.
Lethal.
not because the jungle kills you, Nick had said. Just because it is what it is.
Mace put out a hand to stop Vaster as the lor pelek swept by him. "What will you do with the captives?" Vaster rumbled wordlessly in his throat, and now again his meaning unfurled in Mace's mind.
They come with us.
"You can take care of prisoners?" We don't take care of them. We give them to the jungle.
"The tan pel'trokal," Mace murmured. "Jungle justice." Somehow, this made perfect sense.
Though he could not approve, he could not help but understand.
Vastor nodded as he turned to move on.,'/ is our way.
"Is that different from murder?" Though Mace was looking at Vastor, he sounded like he was asking himself. "Can any of them survive? Cast out alone, without supplies, without weapons-" The lor pelek gave Mace a predator's grin over his shoulder, showing his needle-sharp teeth. I did, he growled, and walked away.
"And the children?" But Mace was talking to the lorpeleKs departing back; Vastor was already snapping at three or four ragged young Korunnai. What he might be ordering them to do, Mace couldn't say; Vastor's meaning had departed with his attention.
Mace drifted in the direction the last captive he'd spoken to had indicated. He stopped at the edge of a smoldering puddle of flame-projector fuel. It had burned nearly out; black coils of smoke twisted upward from only a few patches of dawn-paled flame.
A step or two in from the edge of the puddle lay a body.
It lay on its side, curled in the characteristic fetal burn-victim ball. One of its arms seemed to have escaped its general contraction. The arm pointed at the near rim of the puddle's scorch mark, palm-down, as though this corpse had died trying to drag itself, one-handed, from the flames.
Mace couldn't even tell if it had been a man, or a woman.
He squatted on his heels at the edge of the scorch, staring. Then he wrapped his arms around his knees, and just sat. There didn't seem to be anything else to do.
He had asked that last captive where she'd last seen the girls' mother.
He could not possibly determine if this corpse had once been the woman who'd given birth to Pell and to Keela; if this smoking mass of charred dead flesh had held them in its arms and kissed away their childish tears.
Did it matter?
This had been someone's parent, or brother, or sister. Someone's child. Someone's friend.
Who had died anonymously in the jungle.
He couldn't even tell if this corpse had been killed by a Korun bul let, or a vibroshield, or a Balawai blaster. Or if it had simply been unlucky enough to get in the way of a stream of fire from a steam-crawler's turret gun.
Perhaps in the Force, he might have been able to sense some answers. But he couldn't decide if knowing would be better than not knowing. And to touch the Force again in this dark place was a risk he was not prepared to take.
So he just sat, and thought about the dark.
Sat while the guerrillas splintered into bands that melted away down the mountainside. Sat while the prisoners were marched off in a gang, surrounded by akk dogs. Sat while the sun slanted past a pair of northeast peaks, and a wave of light rolled down the slope above him.
Vastor came to him, rumbling something about leaving this place before the gunships arrived.
Mace did not even look up.
He was thinking about the light of the sun, and how it did not touch the darkness in the jungle.
Nick stopped on his way out of camp. In one arm, he carried Urno; Nykl slept against his other shoulder, tiny arms clasped around his neck. Keela stumbled along behind, one hand pressing against the spray bandage that closed her head wound while she used the other to lead little Pell. Nick must have asked Mace a question, because he paused at the side of the Jedi Master as though waiting for an answer.
But Mace had no answers to give.
When he got no response, Nick shrugged and moved on.
Mace thought about the dark. The Jedi metaphor of the dark side of the Force had never seemed so appropriate before-less the dark of evil than the dark of a starless night: where what you think is a vine cat is only a bush, and what appears to be a tree may very well be a killer standing motionless, waiting for you to look away.
Mace had read Temple Archive accounts written by Jedi who had brushed the dark and recovered. These accounts often mentioned how the dark side seemed to make everything clear; Mace knew now that this was only a delusion. A lie.
The truth was exactly opposite.
There was so much dark here, he might as well be blind.
Morning sun struck the compound, and brought gunships with it: six of them, a double flight, roaring straight in from the stinging glare of Al'har as it cleared the mountains. Their formation blossomed into a rosette as they peeled off to angle for staggered, crisscrossing strafing runs.
Mace still didn't move.
Might as well be blind, he thought, and perhaps he also said it aloud- For the voice that spoke from behind him seemed to be answering.
"The wisest man I know once told me:,'/ is in the darkest night that the light we are shines brightest." A woman's voice, cracking with exhaustion and hoarse with old pain-and perhaps it was only this voice that could have kindled a torch in Mace's vast darkness, only this voice that could have brought Mace to his feet, turning, hope blooming inside his head, almost happy- Almost even smiling- He turned, his arms opening, his breath catching, and all he could say was, "Depa." But she did not come to his embrace, and the hope inside him sputtered and died. His arms fell to his sides. Even prepared by what Nick had told him, he was not remotely ready for this.
Jedi Master Depa Billaba stood before him in the tattered remnants of Jedi robes, stained with mud and blood and jungle sap. Her hair-that had once been a lush, glossy mane as black as space, that she had kept regimented in mathematically precise braids-was tangled, spiked with dirt and grease, raggedly short as though she had hacked it off with a knife. Her face was pale and lined with fatigue, and had gone so thin her cheekbones stood out like blades. Her mouth seemed lipless and hard, and bore a fresh burn scar from one corner to the tip of her chin-but these were not the worst of it.
None of these were what kept Mace motionless as though nailed to the ground, even as gunships swept overhead and rained blaster-fire on the compound around them.
In the inferno of explosions, amid the whine of rock splinters and the hammering webwork of plasma, Mace could only stare at Depa's forehead, where she had once worn the shining golden bead of the Greater Mark of Illumination: the symbol of a Chalactan adept. The Mark of Illumination is affixed to the frontal bone of an adept's skull by the elders of that ancient religion, as a symbol of the Uncloseable Eye that is the highest expression of the Chalactan Enlightenment. Depa had worn hers with pride for twenty years.
Now, where the Mark had been was only an ugly ripple of keloid scar, as though the same knife that had slashed away her hair had crudely hacked the symbol of her ancestral religion from the bone of her skull.
And across her eyes, she wore a strip of rag tied like a blindfold: a rag as weathered and stained and ragged as her robes themselves.
But she stood as though she could see him all too well.
"Depa." Mace had to raise his voice to even hear himself through the roar of the repulsorlifts and the laser cannons and the exploding dirt and rock around him. "Depa, what happened? What has happened to you?" "Hello, Mace," she said sadly. "You shouldn't have come." PART TWO INSTINCT FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU I finally understand what I'm doing here. Why I came. I understand the hypocrisy of that list of reasons I offered to Yoda and to Palpatine, in the Chancellor's office those weeks ago.
I was lying to them.
And to myself.
I must have seen the real reason I came here in the first instant I turned to her in the compound: in the pain-etched creases below her cheekbones. In the scar where the Mark of Enlightenment had been.
Yes: it wasn't really her. It was a Force-vision. A hallucination. A lie. But even a lie of the Force is more true than any reality our limited minds can comprehend.
In the rag that bound her eyes but did not blind her to the truth of me- I found my conditions of victory.
I didn't come here to learn what has happened to Depa, nor to protect the reputation of our Order. I don't care what's happened to her, and the reputation of our Order is meaningless.
I did not come to fight this war. I don't care who wins. Because no one wins. Not in real war. It is only a question of how much each side is willing to lose.
I did not come here to apprehend or kill a rogue Jedi, or even to judge one. I cannot judge her. I have been on the periphery of this war for barely a double handful of days, and look what I am on the verge of becoming; she has been in the thick of it for months.
Drowning in darkness.
Buried in the jungle.
I didn't come here to stop Depa. I came here to save her.
I will save her.
And may the Force have mercy on any who would try to stop me, for I will have none.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU I don't remember leaving the compound. I suppose I must have been in some kind of shock.
Not physical; my injuries are minor-though now the bacta patches from our captured medpacs are needed for more serious wounds, and the blaster burn on my thigh is angry and swelling with infection. But shock is the word. Mental shock, perhaps.
Moral shock.
A veil has fallen: between the moment when Depa came to me in the compound, and the moment I came back to myself on the slope below, there is in my mind mostly a blurred haze. In that blurred haze, I find two conflicting memories of our meeting there- And both of them, it seems, are false.
Dreams. Imaginative reinterpretation of events.
Hallucination.
In one memory, she extends a hand toward me, and I reach to take it-but instead I feel a tug at my vest and her lightsaber leaps from its inner pocket and flips through the air to smack her palm. Blaster bolts from the gunships' laser cannons smash craters in the compound; each bolt makes rock and dirt explode like grenades; the air around us fills with red plasma and orange flame-and that old familiar half smile tugs up one corner of her lips and she says, "Up or down?" and I tell her Up and she leaps into an aerial roll over my head and I take a single step forward so that she lands with her back against mine- And the feel of her back against my own. that strong and warm and living touch that I have felt so many times, in so many places, pulls the dread from my heart and the darkness from my eyes and our blades in perfect synchrony meet the fires from above and cast them back into the dawn-scorched sky- As I said: a dream.
The other memory is a silent image of walking calmly at Depa's side through the rain of blasterfire, conversing with calm unconcern, as oblivious to the gunships as we are to the jungle, and to the sunlight of the dawn. In this dream or memory, Depa turns her blindfolded face toward me, her head cocked as though she can see into my heart. Why have you come here, Mace? Do you even know?
I don't hear these words: again like a dream, it seems we merely intend our meaning, and somehow make ourselves understood.
Why did you send for me? is my answer.
That's not the same thing, she reminds me gently. You have to define your conditions of victory. If you don't know what you're trying to do, how can you tell when you've done it?
Why have you come? To stop me? You can do that with one slash of a lightsaber.
,'suppose, I somehow reply, lam trying to find out what has happened here. What is happening. To these people, and to you. Once I understand what's going on, I'll know what to do about it.
The only thing you don't understand, says this blind dream-image of my beloved Padawan, is that you already understand all there is to understand. You just don't want to believe it.
Then the veil thickens, and deepens toward night, and I remember no more until sometime later-not too much later-when I was running helter-skelter down through the jungle, quite alone.
Bounding down a long, long slope half barren with old lava where it wasn't burned with new, I could feel the guerrillas somewhere ahead by the dark pall like smoke they trailed in the Force-and I could track them by the blood spoor their many wounded left on ground and rock and leaf.
And I remember skidding down the rim of a dry wash, and finding Kar Vaster waiting for me at the bottom.
Kar Vaster- I have much to say of this lorpelek. Of the powers I have seen him L
wield, from the drawing of the fever wasps out of Besh and Chalk to the way the jungle itself seems to part for his passage and tangle itself behind. Of his followers: those six Korunnai he calls the Akk Guards, men he's made into lesser echoes of himself. How he has trained them in their signature weapons-those terrifying "vi-broshields"-that he had designed and built. Even the smallest details: the primal ferocity of his gaze, the jungle-noise growl of his wordless voice, and how you hear his meaning as though it were your own voice whispering inside your head- all deserve more depth of comment than I can give them here.
I'm not sure why it took me so long to understand that he and I are natural enemies.
The lorpelek stood on the slope below Mace, holding the reins of a saddled grasser. The grasser kept one of its three eyes fixed warily on Vaster, and when he spoke, the grasser trembled as though it would shy away were it not held in place by an invisible force that overpowered its instincts.
Jedi Windu. You are sent for, doshalo.
Mace did not need to ask by whom. "Where is she?" An hour's ride ahead. Resting in her hoiadah. She no longer walks.
Mace felt dizzy; the world shifted focus as though he looked at its reflection in a rippling pool. "An hour. no longer walks-?" It made no sense, but in the Force it felt like the truth.
"She was here-she was jus'there-" No.
"But she was-she greeted me, and-" Mace passed a hand over his skull, checking for blood or swelling: searching for a head wound. "I returned her lightsaber-we fought-we fought the gunships-" You fought alone.
"She was with me." I sent two of my men to check on you, when you did not join the march. They watched from below, hiding from the Ealawai ships. They saw you: alone in the compound, your blades flashing against the blasterfire. My men say you drove them ojf single-handed, though they did not seem to be damaged. Perhaps you have taught Balawai to fear the Jedi blade. He showed Mace his sharp-filed teeth. Nick Rostu spoke much of your victory at the pass. Even I might not be equal to such a feat.
"She was with me." Mace stared at the traces of portaak amber that stained his palms. "We fought-or we spoke-I can't seem to remember-",'/ is pelekotan you recall.
"The Force-? You're saying it was some kind of Force-vision?" Pelekotan brings us waking dreams of our desires and our fears. Vastor's tone was grave, but not unkind. When we desire what we fear and fear what we desire, pelekotan always answers. Have the Jedi forgotten this?
"It seemed so real-it seemed more real than you do." Vaster shrugged.,'/ was. Only pelekotan is real. Everything else is forms and shadows: less even than a cloud, or a memory. We are pelekotani dream. Have the Jedi forgotten this as well?
Mace didn't answer. He had only then become aware of the balanced weight of his vest: he put a hand to his right-side ribs, and felt through the stained panther leather the outline of a lightsaber, matching his own, which he wore on his left.
Depa's lightsaber.
And if what he'd seen in the compound had been a vision in the Force, what then? Did it change the truth he'd seen? Did it change the truth she'd seen in him?
From the Force, those truths become more real, not less.
"A dream," he heard himself murmur. "A dream." Vaster gestured for him to mount up. Dream she may be, but refuse her summons and you will learn how swiftly dream turns to nightmare.
Mace climbed into the saddle without telling the lorpelek that he already knew.
Some obscure impulse prompted him to ask: "And you, Kar Vaster: what visions does pelekotan bring to you?" His response was a limitless stare, inhuman, as full of unguessable danger as the jungle itself.
Why should pelekotan show me anything? I have no fears.
"And no desires?" But he had already turned to lead the grasser away, and he gave no sign that he had heard.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU Kar Vaster led my grasser on foot; he was able to find a path through the densest, most tangled undergrowth so effortlessly that we could move at a steady trot. After a time, I began to believe-as I now do-that his ability to move through the jungle was only half perception; the other half was raw power. Not only could he sense a path where none could be seen, I believe he could at need make a path where none had existed.
Or perhaps make is the wrong word.
I never saw this power in action; I never saw trees move, nor knots of vines unbind themselves. Instead I felt a continuous current in the Force: a rolling cycle like the breath of some vast creature alone in the dark. Power flowed into him and out again, but I did not feel him use it any more than I feel my muscles use the sugars that feed them.
And that is exactly how it seemed: that we were carried through the jungle effortlessly, like corpuscles in its veins. Or thoughts in its infinite mind.
As though we were pelekotan's dream.
In that ride from the rear to the front of the guerrillas' line of march, I got my first view of the fabled Upland Liberation Front.
The ULF: terror of the jungle. Mortal enemy of the militia. Ruthless, unstoppable warriors who had driven the Confederacy of Independent Systems off this planet.
They were barely alive.
Their march was a ragged column of walking wounded, tracking each other through the jungle by splashes of blood and rich stink of infection. I would learn, later, during the days of hellish march, that this latest operation had been a series of raids on jungle prospector outposts; they were out here not to kill Balawai, but to capture medpacs, food, clothing, weapons, ammunition-supplies that our Republic cannot or will not provide for them.
They were heading for their base in the mountains, where they had gathered nearly all that was left of the Korun people: all their elders and their invalids, their children, and what was left of their herds. Living in confined, crowded space was unnatural for Korunnai. They had no experience with such conditions, and it swiftly took its toll. Diseases unknown in the civilized galaxy ravaged their numbers: in the months since Depa's arrival, dysentery and pneumonia had killed more Korunnai than had the militia's gunships.
These gunships circled like vultures over the jungle. The trees constantly hummed with the sounds of heavy repulsorlifts and turbofans. The hums rose to roars and fell to insectile buzzing, mingled to swarms and split to individuals that curved through the invisible sky. Now and again flame poured into the jungle from above, bringing harsh orange light to the gloom under the canopy, casting black shadows among the green.
I don't think they were actually expecting to hit anyone.
They harrassed us constantly, often firing down at random through the jungle canopy, or sweeping overhead to set vast swathes afire with their Sunfire flame projectors. To return fire would only fix our position for their gunners, and so all we could do was scurry along below the canopy and hope that we would not be seen.
The guerrillas barely seemed to notice. They slogged along-those who could walk-with heads down, as though they had already accepted that sooner or later one of those carpets of flame would fall upon them all. Korun to the bone, they never uttered a word of complaint, and nearly all could draw strength from the Force-from pelekotan-to keep them on their feet.
Those who could not walk were bundled like baggage upon the backs of their grassers.
Most of the animals now bore nothing but wounded; the supplies and equipment looted from the Balawai rode crude but sturdy travois that the grassers dragged behind them.
On this march, too, the ULF would endure a new tactic from the militia: they had begun night raids. They didn't appear to have any hope of actually catching us-that wasn't the point.
Instead, the gunships flew high overhead and fired laser cannons down at random. Just harassment. To spoil our rest. Keeping us awake and jumpy.
Wounded men and women need sleep to heal; none of them would get it. Every dawn, a few more would lie still and cold on their bedrolls when the rest of us arose. Every day a few more would stumble, blind with exhaustion, and stagger away from the line of march to lose themselves among the trees.
Usually permanently.
There are many large predators on Haruun Kal: half a dozen distinct species of vine cats, two smaller variants of akk dogs as well as the giant savage akk wolves, and many opportunistic scavengers such as the jacuna, a flightless avian creature that travels in bands of up to several dozen monkey-lizard-sized birds-which are equally adept at climbing, springing from branch to branch, or running on flat ground, and are not at all picky about whether what they eat is actually dead. And most of the large predators of Haruun Kal are intelligent enough to remember the good feeding to be had in the wake of a column of wounded Korunnai. Which is why stragglers rarely caught up with us again.
We were, as Nick would say, a walking all-you-can-eat buffet line.
This is also why the ULF didn't have to post much of a guard on the prisoners.
There were twenty-eight, all told: two dozen jungle prospectors and the four surviving children. The jups were left to stagger along supporting each other as best they could, dragging those who could not walk on smaller versions of the travois hauled by the grassers.
They were watched by only a pair of Vastor's Akk Guards and six of their fierce akk dogs; as Vaster led Mace past, he explained that the guards and dogs were there only to make sure the Balawai did not steal weapons or supplies from wounded Korunnai, or otherwise attack their captors. The guards didn't need blasters; any prisoner who wished to escape into the jungle was welcome to.
That is, after all, what was going to happen to them anyway: stripped of everything but their clothing and boots, they would be turned loose in the jungle, left to make their way to whatever safety they might be able to find.
Tan pel'trokal. Jungle justice.
Mace leaned alongside the grasser's neck, to speak softly for Vastor's ears alone. "How do you know they won't double back along the line of march? Some of your wounded are barely walking. These Balawai might think it worth the risk to steal weapons or supplies." Vaster gave a grin like a mouthful of needles. Can you not feel them? They are in the jungle, not of the jungle. They cannot surprise us.
"Then why are they still here?" It's light, Vaster rumbled, with a wave of the wrist at the green-lit leaves above. The day belongs to the gunships. We give prisoners tan pel'trokal after sunset.
"In the dark," Mace murmured.
Yes. The night belongs to us.
Mace remembered the recording of Depa's whisper:. I use the night, and the night uses me. It gave his chest a heavy ache. His breath came hard and slow.
Nick was down with the prisoners, leading by the reins a mangy, underfed grasser. This grasser had another dual-saddle setup like the one that had been blown to bits on Nick's grasser back in the notch pass; each saddle was big enough to hold two children. Urno and Nykl rode in the upper, forward-facing saddle, gripping the heavy pelt of the grasser's ruff, peering out from below its ears. Keela and Pell rode in the lower saddle, facing the rear and clinging to each other in mute despair.
Seeing those four children reminded the Jedi Master of the child who was not there, and he had to look away from Kar Vaster. In his head he saw the lor pelek holding the corpse of a boy. He saw the gleam of the shield through the wet streaked sheen ofTerrel's blood. He could not meet Vastor's eyes without hating him. "And the children, too?" The words seemed to swell up Mace's throat and push themselves out at the other man. "You give them to the jungle?",'/ is our way. Vastor's growl softened with understanding. You are thinking of the boy.
The one in the bunker. Mace still could not meet his eyes. "He was captured. Disarmed." He was a murderer, not a soldier. He attacked the helpless. "So did you." Yes. And if I am taken by the enemy, I will get worse than I gave. Do you think the Ealawai will offer me a dean, quick death?
"We're not talking about them," Mace said. "We're talking about Y you.
Vaster only shrugged.
Nick caught sight of them and gave a sardonic wave. "I'm not really a baby-sitter," he called.
"I just play one on the HoloNet." His tone was cheerful, but on his face the Jedi Master could read the clear knowledge of what would happen to these children at sunset. Mace's own face hurt; he touched his forehead and discovered there a scowl. "What's he doing here?" Vastor stared past Nick, as though to look upon him would be a compliment the young Korun did not deserve. He cannot be trusted with real work.
"Because he left me behind to save his friends? Chalk and Besh are veteran fighters. Aren't they worth the effort?" They are expendable. As is he.
"Not to me," Mace told him. "No one is." The lorpelek seemed to consider this for a long time as he walked on, leading Mace's grasser. I do not know why Depa wanted you here, he said at length. But I do not have to know. She desires your presence; that is enough. Because you are important to her, you are important to our war. Much more important than a bad soldier like Nick Rostu.
"He's hardly a bad soldier-" He is weak. Cowardly. Afraid of sacrifice.
"Risking his mission-his life-for his friends might make Nick a bad soldier," Mace said, "but it makes him a good man." And because he somehow could not resist, he added: "Better than you." Vastor looked up at the Jedi Master with jungle-filled eyes. Better at what?
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU I don't see Vastor as evil. Not as a truly bad man. Yes, he radiates darkness-but so do all the Korunnai. And the Balawai. His is the darkness of the jungle, not the darkness of the Sith.
He does not live for power, to cause pain and dominate all he surveys. He simply lives.
Fiercely. Naturally. Stripped of the restraints of civilization.
He is less a man than he is an avatar of the jungle itself. Dark power flows into him and out again but it does not seem to touch him. He has a savage purity that I might envy, were I not a Jedi and sworn to the light.
Black is the presence of every color.
He doesn't make the darkness, he only uses it. His inner darkness is a reflection of the darkness of his world; and it darkens the world around him in turn. Internal and external darkness create each other, just as do internal and external light: that is the underlying unity of the Force.
As Depa might say, he didn't start this war. He's just trying to win it.
And that was it, right there: my Jedi instincts had made a connection below the threshold of my consciousness. Vastor. The jungle. The akk dogs, and the humans who had been made into Vastor's pack. Depa. Darkness so deep it was like being blind. Nick's words: The jungle doesn't promise. It exists. Not because the jungle kills you. Because it is what it is.
The war itself.
Only later, when I would spend a full day riding alongside Depa's howdah on the dorsal shell of her immense ankkox, when I would have to lean close to the gauzy curtains to catch her half- whispered words, would I understand where my instincts were leading me.
There are times when her voice is strong and clear, and her arguments lucid, and if I close my eyes and ignore the rocking of the ankkox's gait, the insect stings and rich floral rot of the jungle, I can imagine us chatting over a couple of cups of rek tea in my meditation chamber at the Jedi Temple.
In those times, she makes a terrifying sense.
"You still think like a judicial," she told me once. "That's your fundamental error. You still think in terms of enforcing the law. Upholding the rules. You were a great peace officer, Mace, but you're a terrible general. That's what cost so many lives at Geonosis: we went in like judi-cials. Trying to rescue hostages without loss of life. Trying to keep the peace. The Geonosians already knew we were at war-so only a few of us survived." "And if I thought like a general, what should I have done?" I asked her. "Let Obi-Wan and Anakin die?" "A general," murmured the shadow through the curtains, "would have dropped a baradium bomb on that arena." "Depa, you can't be serious," I began, but she had stopped listening to me.
"Win the war," she went on. "Win at the cost of two Jedi, one Senator, and a few thousand of the enemy." "At the cost of everything that makes jedi what we are." "Instead, a hundred and more Jedi died, and you have a galaxy at war. Millions will die, and millions more will end up like that boy Kar killed: twisted, angry, and evil. Gather a million corpses, and tell them your ethics outweighed their lives." To this I have no easy answer, even now.
But as Yoda says: There are questions for which we can never have answers. We can only be answers.
That is what I must try to be, for I know, now, what it means to be a keeper of the peace in the Galaxy of War.
That is: it means nothing at all.
There is no peace. What we thought was the Great Peace of the Republic was only a dream from which our galaxy has now awakened. I doubt we'll ever fall back into any dream like that again.
In the Galaxy of War, no one sleeps that well.
This understanding came later; at the time, as I sat in the grasser's saddle and looked down at Kar Vaster, the prisoners behind us and Depa's ankkox still unseen ahead, I had only a notion-a hunch-a mass of unprocessed feelings and unsorted ideas.
An instinct.
But somehow my instincts seemed to be working again. which is why I chose to send Vastor on without me. As I asked Depa a thousand times, when she was my Padawan- Is the true lesson what the teacher teaches, or what the student learns?
A few paces beyond where the Balawai prisoners stumbled along the jungle floor, Mace Windu reached past the grasser's nose and took its reins in one hand. "This is far enough. Leave me here." Vastor stopped, looking back over his massive shoulder. Depa awaits.
"She's waited for weeks. She'll wait a few hours more." For the first time since the battle at the notch pass, Mace felt calm. Sure. On solid ground. "Go on without me. I will attend her when I choose." You are sent for. She is not to be defied. Vastor turned and tugged on the reins, but Mace had them in his fist, and they might as well have been bolted to a cliff.
Vastor's eyes flickered with distant danger: lightning from a storm below the horizon. You will regret this.
"I am a Jedi Master, and a Senior Member of the Jedi Council," Mace said patiently. "I am a general of the Grand Army of the Republic. I am not to be sent for. If she wants to see me, she will find me at the steamcrawler track before dusk." The lightning in the lor peletts eyes came closer. I have said I will deliver you.
Mace matched his stare exactly. "Funny: that's almost what Nick said. He didn't have much luck with it either." My orders- "Are your problem." Mace let the reins fall and spread his open hands. He went perfectly still, perfectly relaxed, perfectly calm, except for the sizzle of the Force that arced like static electricity from the two lightsaber handgrips to his empty palms. "Unless you choose to make them our problem. You can do that right now, if you like." Vaster let the reins drop as well. He stepped away from the grasser and turned to face the Jedi Master squarely. His immense shoulders bulged, and muscles across his chest went rigid in acid-etched definition. The air shimmered like a mirage around him: anger beat against Mace like a hot wind in the Force. You will come "with me.
"No." Dark power clutched at Mace's will. You will come with me.
Slowly, reluctantly, Mace slid himself out of the saddle and slipped to the ground. He took two steps toward Vaster.
And stopped.
"I no longer enjoy your company," the Jedi Master said. "Go now. Do not return to me without Depa." Vastor's eyes widened. His mouth worked soundlessly.
"You and I should not be alone together. There may be a fight." Tendons stood out in Vastor's neck, winching his head downward and pulling his lips away from his sharp-filed teeth.,' do not wish to fight you, doshalo. Despite the rage smoking off him in the Force, his voice was soft. Depa will be angry to find you dead.
"Then you'd best be on your way," Mace replied reasonably. "Don't want to make Depa angry, do you?" Apparently he didn't: Vastor's growl thinned to a snarl of frustration. And what should I tell her you are doing here?
"Nothing that I can be bothered to explain to you." Mace turned back to his grasser and took its reins once more. "Any questions Depa might have, she should ask me herself." Though pretending to busy himself with adjusting the grasser's tack, Mace paid absolute attention to Vastor's white-hot stare burning its way into his shoulder blades. He stayed loose and balanced, ready to spring in any direction should the lor pelek lunge for his back.
Instead, he only heard a snarl and a growl and several short, deep yips: Vaster had said something to one of the Akk Guards who watched the prisoners. With one last glare that Mace could feel as though a lens focused sunlight on his skin, Vaster whirled away and plunged into the jungle, loping up the line of march.
Mace watched him go, bleak satisfaction on his face. He thought: So much for being the welcome guest.
The Akk Guard whom Vastor had spoken to gave Mace a dire look, echoed by the three akk dogs nearby. Mace ignored them all, and a few seconds later the Akk Guard stomped off to find his partner and the other akks. Mace caught Nick Rostu's eye and beckoned. Nick turned the children's grasser over to one of the Balawai and trotted over to the Jedi Master, keeping one eye turned toward the departing Akk Guard. "Shee. Those guys give me the creeps. Looked a little tense there, Master Windu. What did the big guy say to you?" "Here, hold him." Mace handed the grasser's reins to Nick. "How much did you hear?" "Some of what you said. Got some guts, you do." Nick stretched up to scratch the grasser on the side of its neck. "But Vastor-maybe you've noticed? You can only understand him when he's talking directly to you. When he's talking to somebody else, he always sounds like he's growling or whistling or making some other kind of animal noises and stuff." "Yes, I had noticed something like that," Mace said slowly, nodding. "But I'd thought it was just me. Back at the outpost. things were confusing." "That's why it's kind of like you're talking to yourself, you get it? In my head, he talks like a Pelek Baw curb-monkey. So what did he say to you?" "He was," Mace said dryly, "trying to impress me with his sense of duty." "So: what now? You didn't dust off the most dangerous man in the Korunnal Highland just to come and have a chat with the president of Rostu Jungle Nannies Inc. You have a move to make." Mace nodded. "We have a move to make. Mount up. You're going to lead these prisoners to the steamcrawler track so that the militia can find them and pick them up." iL Nick's mouth dropped open. "We. me? Why would I want to do something like that?" "Because I gave them the word of a Jedi Master that if they surrendered I would keep them from harm. I will not be made a liar." "What's your word got to do with me?" "Nothing at all," Mace said. "I'm sure you enjoy thinking about Keela being disemboweled by a vine cat. When you think of Pell, do you see her starving to death in a gripvine nest or having her eyes pecked out by jacunas?" Nick looked sick. "Hey, easy with that tusker poop, huh?" "You think the boys will be gored by tuskers, or shredded by brassvines? Maybe they'll get lucky and fall into a death hollow. At least that is relatively swift, as their lungs are eaten by caustic fumes, and their own tears scald their faces like acid." The young Korun turned away. "You have any idea what Kar and Depa will do to me?" "You've been over the ground in this region. If I lead them myself, I'll end up losing us all in the jungle. Mount up. Right now." Nick snorted. "Shee, still pretty free with the orders, aren't we? What if I just don't wanna?
What if I do like thinking about all that stuff? What if I want those people dead? What then?" Mace went still. He stared off into the jungle, his eyes filled with its darkness. "Then I will beat you into unconsciousness," he said quietly, "and ask someone else." He looked at Nick.
Nick swallowed.
Mace said, "I won't tell you again." Nick mounted up.
"Kar Vaster," the Jedi Master said, looking again into the jungle, this time up the line of march where the lor pelek had vanished, "is not the most dangerous man on the Korunnal Highland." Nick shook his head. "You only say that because you don't really know him." "I say that," Mace Windu replied, "because he doesn't know me." O
A JEDI" S WORD T, he prisoners limped along in ragged knots, holding each other up and nervously eyeing the pacing akk dogs. Mace forced his way through the tangled undergrowth toward them, Nick close behind on the grasser.
"Am I missing something here?" Nick leaned over to speak softly, one arm bent across the back of the grassers thick neck. "Last night these ruskakks were trying to carve off a hunk of roast Windu." "This tan pel'trokal." Mace's voice was equally low and far more grim. "You approve of it?" "Sure." Nick glanced at the grasser that the children rode, and swiftly looked away. "Well, in principle, anyway." His vivid eyes went narrow and cynical. "Wasn't too long ago Kar used to just kill them all. Can't afford to feed 'em. What else should we do? Givin' them the justice was Depa's call." "Oh?" "Makes sense, don't it? If the Balawai think we'll kill 'em anyway, why should they surrender? Every one of them'd fight to the death. That gets expensive, y'know? So we give 'em to the jungle. At least they got a chance." "How many survive?" ome.
"Half? A quarter? One in a hundred?" "How should I know?" Nick shrugged. "Does it make a difference?" Mace Windu said, "Not to me." Nick closed his eyes and leaned his head against the grasser's ear as though exhausted, or in pain. "You've gone bats, haven't you," he said. "You're completely insane." Mace stopped. A twitch of frown drew a vertical crease between his eyebrows. "No. Just the opposite, in fact." "What's that supposed to mean?" But Mace was already walking away.
Nick muttered a curse on all fraggin" Jedi who used nikkle nuts for brains, then goaded the grasser along after him.
When the prisoners saw them coming, a man's voice said, "It's the Jedi. No, the other one.
The raz,"Jedi." Mace thought this voice might belong to the man he'd spoken to in the steamcrawler this morning: the gray-faced one with a chest wound and a missing hand, who would not believe in a Jedi's word.
Mace chose not to ask what he meant by the real Jedi.
Some few of the prisoners clustered toward him, straightening their clothing and forcing their faces into expressions of hope; most just stopped where they were, swaying with exhaustion or stumbling against the great gray trees. Some grabbed handfuls of vines to lower themselves slowly to the ground.
A few tens of meters downslope, the two Akk Guards stared up at Mace with undisguised hostility. Two of the six akk dogs on prisoner duty slouched sullenly nearby.
The children's grasser was led by a man whom Mace recognized as Urno and Nykl's father.
The only clean spots on his dirt- and blood-smeared face were the twin tracks from his eyes to his chin, rinsed white by tears. He dropped the reins and threw himself on the ground at Mace's feet. "Please-please, Your Honor-Your Highness-" he sobbed, facedown into the jungle floor, "please don't let them kill my boys. Do what you want with me-I deserve it, I know, I'm sorry for what I done, but my boys. it's not their fault, they didn't do nothing-please, I don't-I never met a Jedi before-I don't even know what I should call you-" "Stand up," Mace said sternly. "Jedi are not to be knelt to. We are not your masters, but your servants. Stand up." Slowly, the astonished man pulled himself to his feet. The back of his hand smeared a streak of mud below his nose. "Okay," he said. "All right. What's coming to me-I can take it like a man. but my boys-" "What's coming to you is your life, and possibly your freedom as well." The man blinked, uncomprehending. "Your Honor-?" "Call me Master Windu." Mace swept past him and opened his arms, beckoning to all the prisoners. "Gather 'round. I'll need you all to stick closer together. There will not be enough of us to look after stragglers." "Sir?" Keela said as the children's grasser caught up. She had twisted sideways in the lower saddle to stare at Mace with damp, bloodshot eyes. "Sir, what are they going to do with us?
Where's Mom? Are you gonna let them put us out in the jungle?" Mace met her tear-blurred gaze squarely. "No. I'm going to send you back to the city.
You're going home. All of you." Nick muttered, "Don't make promises you can't keep." "I never do." "You don't think Kar and those Akk Guards down there are gonna have something to say about it?" "I'm aware of their opinion already. I have my own." "The tan pel'trokal-" "Means nothing to me," Mace said. "I don't care about jungle justice. I care about Jedi justice. And I will see it done." "Jedi justice, my weeping saddle sores. You still don't get it, do you? Jedi anything doesn't mean squat out here-" "I understand the rules now. You read them to me yourself; then Kar Vastor taught me what they mean. Now I can start to play." "That's just it," Nick insisted. "You're in thejung,'e, now. There are no rules." "Of course there are. Don't be an idiot." Nick blinked. "You're kidding, right? You're making a joke." "Stay here and watch," Mace told him, working his way down toward the guards. "Then tell me what you think of my sense of humor." The same Akk Guard whom Mace had kicked now moved to block the Jedi Master's path.
The swellings Vastor's fist had left on the man's face had gone as purple-black as the thickening clouds overhead. Muscle bunched like blocks of duracrete under the skin of his bare chest.
"Where going, Windu?" Mace had to tilt his head back to meet the Korun's stare. "I don't know your name." "You can call me-" "I didn't ask your name," Mace cut him off. "I jtjst don't know it. I don't need to. You should get out of my way." The guard's eyes looked scalded, and more than slightly crazed. "Out of your way, little Jedi?" "I am taking the prisoners to the steamcrawler track." Mace nodded in that general direction.
"I can go past you, or I can go over you. You pick." "Over me? Can fly, you?" The vibroshields strapped to his forearms snarled to life. He raised them to either side of Mace's face. "Draw your toy weapon, little Jedi. Go ahead. Draw." "My lightsaber? Why should I?" Mace raised a finger to tap his own forehead. "This is the only weapon I need." "Yeah?" A sneer: "What, think me to death, you gonna?" "You misunderstand." By way of explanation, he splattered the Korun's nose with a sharp head-butt.
The Korun staggered backward. Mace moved with him in perfect synchronization as though they were dancing, hands gripping the man's massive biceps. When the Korun started to recover his balance, his head naturally coming forward once more, Mace yanked on his arms, pulling him into another head-butt that brought Mace's forehead and the point of the Korun's chin together with a crack as sharp as a breaking rock.
Mace stepped back to let the semiconscious man collapse. The other guard snarled and lunged at Mace's back, only to find himself facing the business end of a sizzling purple lightsaber.
"He's alive," Mace said calmly. "So are you. For now. The next one of you pathetic nerfs who raises a hand to me will die for it. Do you understand?" The Korun only stared at him with murder on his face.
""Answer me!" Mace roared. With a convulsive snarl, he threw his lightsaber on the ground at the Korun's feet. Faster than the eye could follow, his hand flashed out, his thumb hooking the Korun's cheek while his fingers dug in behind the hinge of the man's jaw. He yanked the Korun's face to within a centimeter of his own, and there was open raging madness in his eyes.
"DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?" The Korun's mouth worked in speechless shock. Mace howled into his face, "YOU WANT TO DIE? YOU WANT TO DIE RIGHT NOW? MAKE A MOVE! DO IT! DO IT AND DIE!" The astonished Korun could only blink and mumble and try to shake his head. Mace released the man's face with a contemptuous shove that sent the guard stumbling backward.
Mace opened his empty hand, and his lightsaber flipped up from the ground and smacked into his palm. He tucked it back into the holster inside his vest.
"Never get in my way." His voice was again icily calm. "Ever." He turned his eye to the pair of akk dogs, who were up and growling like looming thunderheads, spines bristling across their armored shoulders.
Mace stared at them.
First one, then the other, lowered its head and flattened those spines. Tails tucked low, the akk dogs backed away.
Mace looked upslope, where Nick stood gaping in blank wonder. The captives huddled even closer together, none daring to make eye contact. Mace beckoned.
By the time Nick and the grasser that carried the children arrived, the downed Akk Guard was stirring. But when he opened his eyes to find Mace still standing over him, he decided to stay on the ground.
"Okay, I admit it," Nick said as they passed by the guards and the dogs. "That was pretty funny. And a little scary: I've never seen you angry before." "You still haven't," Mace said softly. "Remember those rules of the jungle I was talking about? You just saw one in action." "What rule was that?" "When the big dog's walking," said Jedi Master Mace Windu, "little dogs step aside." Icy rain splashed down through the canopy, and thunder rolled like turbojets of gunships passing overhead. Though the day had reached only midafternoon, the storm wrapped the jungle in late-twilight gloom. Mace walked a few paces behind Nick's bedraggled grasser.
Raindrops tapped his skull, atid a chilly rivulet twisted along his spine. In places where the leaf mold gave way to bare ground, mud sucked at his boots with every step. Sometimes he sank in deeply enough that the mud leaked over his boot tops. Only by drawing strength from the Force could he keep moving.
He could not imagine what the march must be like for the wounded prisoners.
Every once in a while, a hunk or two of the hail that the thunder-head above spat down would bounce all the way through the layers of leaf and branch and vine and give someone a knock. By the time they reached ground level, most of these hailstones had melted down to about half the size of Mace's fist: too small to be dangerous, though still large enough to raise stinging welts on his head. The Balawai prisoners gathered ones that fell nearby, sucking on them to melt them in their mouths. With a bit of wiping, these hailstones made the cleanest source of water they were likely to find-they carried only the faintest sulfurous traces of volcanic smoke and gases.
In the Force, Mace felt the hot fierce sting of an approaching akk dog; a moment later he felt a Force-nudge on his right shoulder blade. He reached up to tug on Nick's ankle. "Keep them going," he said, raising his voice over the hiss of the rain. "I'll be right back." A few steps off their line of march, a man's shadow began to take shape through the rain- blurred gloom. Mace walked toward it, weaving between trees and moving vines aside with a gesture, to find the bruised Akk Guard heading for him carrying one of the Balawai. Behind the guard, the great akk Mace had felt made a gray silhouette.
"Fell out, this one. Think he's fevered, me." The guard set the Balawai on his feet. It was the wounded man with the missing hand. "Better keep someone with him, you." Mace nodded as he looped the man's good arm over his shoulders. "Thank you. I'll look after him." The Balawai gazed at him without recognition.
The guard frowned down at them. "Gonna kill you for this, Kar is. Know that, you?" "I appreciate your concern." "No concern. Just tellm. That's all." "Thank you." The guard frowned a moment longer, then gave an elaborate shrug before he turned away and faded once more into the gloom.
Mace thoughtfully watched him go. The two Akk Guards hadn't been hard to co-opt; while Nick wrangled the Balawai into something resembling marching order, Mace had worked his way back upslope to where one stood watching him, while the one he'd knocked down still sat on the ground massaging his broken nose.
Mace squatted beside him. "How's your face?" he'd asked gravely.
The guard's voice was half muffled by his hands. "Why care, you?" "It's no dishonor to lose to a Jedi," Mace had said. "Here, let me see." When the astonished Akk Guard took his hands away from his face, Mace put his hands to either side of the man's nose and popped the bones straight with one brisk twisting squeeze. The sudden sharp pain made the Korun gasp, but it was over so quickly he didn't even have time to yelp.
After that he could only blink in wonder. "Hey-hey, feels better, that. How'd you-" "Sorry I lost my temper," Mace said, standing to include the other Akk Guard. "But I can't back down from a challenge. You understand." The two Korunnai exchanged a glance, and they both nodded reluctantly, as Mace had known they would: Vaster had trained them like dogs, and like dogs their only answer to the pat on the head that followed the kick was to wag their tails and hope they weren't in trouble anymore. "I think you're both solid," Mace went on. "Strong fighters. That's why I went at you so hard: respect. You're too dangerous for me to play games with." The Korun with the broken nose had said in a tone of generous concession, "Got a stone- sweet head-butt, you." He chuckled, crossing his eyes to look at the bloodied swelling between them. "Best I ever ate." Now the other Akk Guard could not resist chiming in. "And that grab on my face-was a Jedi thing, that? Never seen it before, me. Maybe teach me, you?" Mace had no more time for pleasantries. "Listen: I know taking the prisoners will cause trouble with Kar. And I know you'll be in trouble for letting them go with me. Why don't you stay with us? Bring your dogs. Keep the Balawai in line, and don't let any of them get lost. It's not like Kar won't know where we're going. I told him myself. And if you're along, he won't have any trouble finding us: you can feel each other in pelekotan. Right?" Again they had exchanged glances, and again they had nodded.
"If Kar wants these prisoners, he can take them from me himself. How can he blame you for losing if he's afraid to step up?" To a dark-soaked Korun, this was undeniable logic.
"Right," the bruised guard said happily. "Right. Thinks you're a tumblepup in vine cat skin, him? Let him yank your tail. Will find out quick enough, I think." And so Mace Windu had acquired a pair of Korun shepherds for his flock of Balawai.
Mace had cemented Nick's assistance with a similar technique. As they were about to turn aside from the ULF column, Mace had stood thoughtfully alongside Nick's grasser. "Nick," he'd begun, "I'm going to need an aide." The young Korun had squinted suspiciously down from the saddle. "An aide? What for?" "Like you said when you picked me up in Pelek Baw: I'm not from around here. I need someone who can look after me, give me advice, that kind of thing-" "You want advice? Flush the fraggin' Balawai and shag your Jedi butt back up the column.
Make some kissy-face with Kar and Depa before they chop you into sausage. Any other advice you want, feel free to ask." "That's what I'm doing." "Huh?" "I need someone who knows his way around out here. Someone I can trust." Nick snorted. "Good fraggin' luck. I wouldn't trust anyone out here-" "I don't," Mace told him. "Except you." "Me?" Nick shook his head. "You really have gone bats. Haven't you heard? I'm the least trustworthy guy in the ULF. I'm the weak coward, right? I'm the useless butter-brain who couldn't even get you out here from Pelek Baw without screwing it up-and now I'm screwing up again by playing along with this whole nikkle-nut Free-the-Ealawai parade-" "You're the only trustworthy man I've met on Haruun Kal," Mace had said solidly. "You're the only man I can trust to do the right thing." "Hoo-fraggin'-ray. Look where it's gotten me." "It's gotten you," Mace said, "a chance to join the personal staff of a general of the Grand Army of the Republic." "Yeah?" Nick began to look interested. "What's it pay?" "Nothing," Mace admitted, and Nick's face fell, but the Jedi Master went on, "Though when I leave this planet, I'll be taking my staff with me." Nick's eyes recovered a little spark.
"With a brevet rank of, let's say, major? And once we get to Coruscant, I'll be needing staff instructors to train officers in guerrilla tactics. A few months as an urban- and jungle-warfare consultant affiliated with the Jedi Temple should make you pretty attractive to all those mercenary captains out there. You might even get your own company. Isn't that what you want?
Or am I confusing you with some other Korun whose fondest dream is to travel the galaxy as a mercenary?" "You bet your sweet-I mean, No, sir. General. Major Rostu at the general's service. Sir.
Uh-is there any kind of swearing-in, or anything?" "I hadn't really thought about it," Mace admitted. "I've never inducted anyone into the Grand Army of the Republic before." "I feel like I should raise my right hand or something." Mace nodded thoughtfully. "Put your left hand over your heart, raise your right and stand at attention." Nick did so. "This is-uh, y'know, I' feel kind of funny about this-" "It is not to be undertaken lightly. The Force stands witness to such oaths." "Sure enough." Nick swallowed. "Okay, I'm ready." "Do you solemnly swear to serve the Republic in thought, in word, and in deed; to defend its citizens, resist its enemies, and champion its justice with the whole of your heart, your strength, and your mind; to forswear all other allegiances; to obey all lawful orders of your superior officers; to uphold the highest ideals of the Republic, and at all times to conduct yourself to the credit of the Republic as its commissioned officer, by witness of, aid from, and faith in the Force?" Didn't sound bad at all, Mace thought.,' should probably write that down.
Nick blinked silently. His eyes looked glassy, and he licked his lips.
Mace leaned toward him. "Say I do, Nick." "I–I guess I do," he said in a tone of wondering discovery, as though he had just learned something astonishing about himself. "I mean: yes. I do." "Come to attention, and salute." Nick had snapped to in very creditable fashion, though he still looked a bit dazed. "Hey- hey, I feel something. In the Force-" His daze was replaced by open astonishment. "It's you." "A soldier at attention does not speak, except to answer direct questions. Is this understood?" "Yes, sir." "What you feel is our new relationship: it has a resonance in the Force not unlike the bond of an akk to its human." "So I'm your dog, now?" "Nick." "Right, right, shut up. I know. Uh-sir." "At ease, Major," Mace had said as he finally returned the young Korun's salute. "Move them out." Now as the departing Akk Guard disappeared into the rain, Mace carried the wounded Balawai back to the group of exhausted prisoners. He couldn't find anyone among them who even looked strong enough to support this man's weight over the jumbled tree roots and through the calf-deep mud, so he just shrugged and joined the march, holding the Balawai's arm around his neck.
Heads down, shoulders hunched against the icy downpour, they slogged on.
They broke out of the trees on a small promontory that ended in a sheer cliff. Jungle swarmed its base a hundred meters below. They had been sidestepping down a long switchback, heading for the canyon floor. Half a klick behind, a ribbon of waterfall steamed down a thousand-meter drop; the far canyon wall was a riot of greens and purples and bright shining red that eclipsed half the sky. The thunderstorm swept to their rear as Mace and Nick broke out from the trees, and in the near distance through the canyon's mouth ahead, only a klick away-glowing now with afternoon sun blazing red-slanted from a crystal sky-lay the broad bare-dirt curve of the steamcrawler track.
Mace and Nick were both on foot. The feverish Balawai was tied into the grasser's saddle.
"There it is," Nick said. His voice was low and grim. "Pretty, ain't it?" "Yes. Pretty." Mace stepped around the grasser. "Pity we didn't make it." Any Force-sensitive could have felt the menace that lay across their path; to Mace, it felt like an arc of forest fire ripping through the trees. He couldn't feel exactly what was down there, but he knew it was Vaster: whatever forces he had brought after them now sealed the mouth of the canyon.
Nick nodded. He unslung his rifle, checked the clip, and cocked it. "Just couldn't move fast enough." He glanced back to where the Balawai were now struggling out to the fringe of the undergrowth. He shook his head. "Only needed an hour. That's all. One more hour, we woulda been clear." "What's going on?" The boys' father joined them near the rim of the cliff. "Is that the track?
Why have we stopped?" The Akk Guard with the bruised face Came out of the trees; the six dogs and the other guard were fanned out behind the prisoners. He nodded toward the thick arc of danger that all but the grassers and the Balawai could feel ahead. "Hard luck, huh? Told you Kar would come, me." "Yes." Mace folded his arms. "It was too much to hope that he might let us go." He turned to the Akk Guard. "You can go to him, if you like." "Maybe will, us." The Korun had recovered some of his former swagger. His chest swelled out, and he looked down at Mace with an air of contempt that might have been convincing, if he hadn't been so careful to keep himself just out of arm's reach. "Not going nowhere, you, huh?" Mace glanced at Nick; Nick shrugged dolefully. Mace said, "It seems not." Knots of exhausted Balawai untied themselves and frayed to pieces to let the departing Akk Guard through. He joined the other, and along with the dogs they faded into the trees beyond the reach of the afternoon sun.
Nick fingered his rifle. "Think they'll really go down there to Kar?" "Not at all," Mace said crisply. "They'll move up the switchback to cut off our retreat." "Don't much like the sound of that. What's our move?" "You tell me, Major." Nick blinked. "You're kidding." "Not at all. Given our victory conditions-saving as many of these people's lives as possible-what should we do?" "I can't believe you're asking me." "What I'm asking you," Mace said, "is not what we're going to do, but what we should do.
Let me put it another way: what does Kar think we'll do?" "Well." Nick looked back up the trail, then forward down toward the mouth of the canyon and the steamcrawler track. "We should split up. If we all stay together, we all get caught either by whatever Kar's got below, or the guards and the ULF behind us. If the prisoners scatter, some might slip through while Kar's rounding up the rest." "Exactly." Mace pointed at the boys' father. "You. Get the others out of the trees. I want all of you on this rock. On your knees, with your hands behind your heads." The Balawai gaped. "Are you crazy?" "Y'know," Nick said, sighing, "I ask him that all the time. Somehow I never get a straight answer." Mace folded his arms across his chest. "All those who don't want to do what I say are welcome to take their chances with the jungle and the ULF." The man turned away, shaking his head.
"What are we gonna do?" Nick asked.
"Something else." "Y'know, if you hadn't told Kar about going to the steamcrawler track, he wouldn't be down there right now." "Yes: he would have overtaken us in the jungle, and we wouldn't have had a chance." "Wait-wait, I get it-" Understanding dawned on Nick's face.
Mace nodded. "Back under the trees, the prisoners would have scattered. Some might have escaped as you say. He's expecting us to scatter, just as you did. From his point of view, it's the obvious move: let some die to save the rest. That's why I expected Kar to try this, instead: find a place where he could trap everyone. Because Kar and I have this in common: with these people, it's all or nothing. He wants to give them all to the jungle. I want to send them all home." Muscle bunched along Mace's jaw. "I am not willing to purchase life with death, unless that death is my own." Nick looked impressed. "Kar's not an easy man to lie to. He's so hooked into pelekotan that lying's a tricky business; I once saw him yank out a guy's tongue-" Mace gave him a sidelong look. "Who lied? I told him that he and Depa would be able to find me at the steamcrawler track this afternoon. The lie is in what he assumed I meant, not in what I said." "And you had me lead, because you figured he'd be able to guess what route I'd take-and you brought the" Akk Guards along so that he'd be able to track us." Mace nodded.
"But why?" "To get us all in a place just like this. Here, I'm sure he thinks he has everyone boxed." "And he does." "So he's in no hurry to come and collect us. Now: what's the steamcrawler track good for, in view of our purpose? It's a broad open area, where any passing gunship will spot these people, and it's clear enough to use as a landing zone." "Yeah." "So how much good does it do him to cut us off from an open area-" Mace reached inside his vest and pulled out the lightsabers. He tossed Depa's to Nick, who caught it reflexively. "- when all we need is a little time, and we can make one of our own?" Nick stared down at the lightsaber in his hand. "It could work," he admitted. "And you want me to teach people warfare?" Mace shrugged. "This isn't warfare, it's dejarik." "Yeah, sure. When Kar shows up, you can be the one to clear the board. Go right ahead." He ducked his head gloomily. "He's gonna kill us both, y'know." Mace's lightsaber found his palm, and a meter-long fountain of energy grew from its emitter.
"That remains to be seen." FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU It took only minutes to clear a landing zone. I had used the Force to pile some of the smaller trees, intending to kindle their damp wood with my blade to make a huge smoking bonfire, but I didn't have to; before we had even cleared the zone, three flights of gunships swarmed overhead. They didn't seem to have much difficulty understanding the situation: twenty-eight kneeling Balawai with fingers laced together behind their necks must have made matters clear enough.
"Looks like we pulled it off," Nick said, though he seemed to take little satisfaction from success. "We saved 'em. Wish they could return the favor." We had barely begun cutting when we had both felt Vastor's forces drawing tight around us: a living noose. Nick had commented that my little deception hadn't fooled him for long.
I didn't answer. I had a feeling that in this particular game of dejarik, Kar was not my true opponent.
One of the gunships circled close overhead: offering itself as bait, to see if hidden guns would open fire when it came within range. And in the Force, I could feel the gunners inside it targeting Nick and me with laser cannons; only our proximity to the Balawai held them back.
As Nick would say: it was time to saddle up.
But before we left, I crouched beside the father of Urno and Nykl. "I want you to take a message to Colonel Geptun." He looked dazed, and his words slurred with exhaustion. "Geptun? The security chief in Pelek Baw? How am I supposed to get in to see him?" "He'll debrief you personally." "He will?" "Tell him the Jedi Master has handled his Jedi problem. Tell him that if he disarms his irregulars and withdraws the militia from the highland, this war is over. He has my word on it." The man goggled at me as though antlers had suddenly sprouted from my forehead-and his astonishment was no greater than Nick's.
"One more thing: remind him that in less than a week I've solved a problem he couldn't manage in four months." I rose, and stood over him so that my shadow fell across his face.
"Tell him that if he does not do as I suggest, he'll be the problem. And I will solve him." 't't led Nick off into the jungle without waiting for a reply.
I did stop for a moment, though, and looked back through the trees, to where the boys' father held them in his arms as they waited for the descending gunship.
To where Keela held Pell, both of their heads lowered against the leaf-whirl thrown up by the ship's turbojets.
I don't expect to be forgiven. I don't even hope for it. I only hope that someday, these children may be able to look at a Jedi without hatred in their hearts.
That's the only reward I want.
Night was falling, and the sun slanted low through the canyon mouth. Navigating was easy: they loped through the thickening twilight, heading directly toward where the Force showed Mace maximum threat.
"So, you've handled the militia's Jedi problem, have you?" Nick muttered as they jogged under the trees. "That'll come as a surprise to Kar and Depa, I'm guessing." "I'm not interested in Kar," Mace said. "I'm only interested in Depa. Where's the nearest subspace comm?" Nick shrugged. "The Lorshan Pass caverns. That's our base-it's only a couple of days away, if we can ever lose the fraggin' gunships. That's where we're heading anyway. Why?" "Less than a day after you get me subspace comm, Depa and I will be leaving this planet. I am willing to waste no more time. I need subspace to call for extraction." "And me, right? You wouldn't leave your whole staff behind, would V
you?
"You have seen what my word is worth." "You think maybe you could, like, send me out first? Because, y'know, I don't want to be anywhere in this whole sector when Kar finds out she's leaving." "Leave Vaster to me." "And, uh, Master General, sir? Have you considered what you're gonna do if she doesn't want to go?" "It's not up to her." "She could have gotten out of here weeks ago, if she wanted. How are you gonna make her go?" Mace said, "I have a hostage." "A what? Are you allowed to do that? I mean, do Jedi take hostages?" "There is one hostage a Jedi may lawfully take. I hope it won't come to that." "Have you considered that she might not give a bucket of tusker poop about this hostage?" "I have," Mace said. His voice was cold, but the thought made a hot knife twist in his belly.
Nick stopped in his tracks. He said weakly, "Have you considered that neither of us might live that long?" He said this because of the twelve snarling akk dogs who had materialized around them as though the jungle had birthed them from the twilight.
Fury chuffed into the Force like the steam from their nostrils. Moving out of the gloom- haunted trees came all six of the Akk Guards. They wore their vibroshields pushed up over their biceps, freeing their hands for the assault rifles and grenade launchers they carried.
Weapons for hunters stalking human prey.
All six wore the human equivalent of the akks' snarls.
None of them spoke.
It was possible, at that moment, that none of them remembered how.
The Force hummed with anger, as though every one of them resonated on a single harmonic.
Mace felt, then, the power of the Force-bonds that linked them-but not to each other. Not one of the Akk Guards had a link with a dog like the one Chalk had had with Galthra.
All eighteen of them, dogs and men alike, were Force-bonded not with each other, but each with one single other, as though they were spokes on a wheel of which he was the hub.
The anger Mace felt was Kar's.
He recognized its distinctive flavor.
He said, "I think Kar might be a little upset about those prisoners after all." Nick stood with his back against Mace's: where once Depa would have been.
Where Depa should have been.
Where, in any sane universe, she would be right now.
Mace heard the familiar snap of an igniting blade and turned to Nick. "Give me that." The young Korun's eyes flared green with the blade's glow. "What am I supposed to fight with, then? My rapierlike wit?" Which would do him as much good as a lightsaber against twelve akk dogs, but Mace didn't tell him that. "You won't be fighting." "Says you." Instead of arguing, Mace reached over the blade and finger-snapped the end of his nose as though flicking away a fly.
Nick blinked, flinching, blurting a reflexive obscenity, and by the time he remembered that he'd had a lightsaber in his hand, the lightsaber was in Mace's.
"Vastor is a predator, not a HoloNet villain: they're not holding us here so that he can gloat.
If he planned to kill us, we'd already be dead." "So why are they holding us here?" A massive shadow approached through the trees: low and huge, with side-bent legs and immense splay-clawed feet.
Nick breathed, "Oh, I get it. He's bringing Depa." HOSTAGE I
he immense shadow crashed closer, its walk a symphony of splintering trees.
It was an ankkox.
A massive armored saurian, the ankkox was the largest land animal of Haruun Kal.
Ankkoxes were twice the size of grassers-more than half again the mass of a full-grown bantha-but built low and wide, with a broad dorsal shell like an oval soup plate turned upside down. The dorsal shell of this one was nearly three meters wide, and well over four meters long.
A drover's chair was bolted to the top of the ankkox's crown shell, a convex disc of armor that capped the beast's head; when an ankkox retracted its head and legs, its crown shell and all six knee shells fit into gaps in its armor as snugly as air locks, enabling the ankkox to survive washes of volcanic gas that it couldn't outrun.
This drover did not sit, but stood wide-legged on the crown armor behind the chair, brandishing a long pole that ended in a sharp-looking hook, to use as a goad in directing the ankkox's path. Two teardrop-shaped shields of ultrachrome were pushed up onto his biceps.
Kar Vaster.
He moved only to direct the ankkox. His face held no expression. He did not even look at Mace and Nick.
The air around him shimmered with his rage.
Smaller trees the ankkox shouldered aside; underbrush it simply crushed beneath its speeder-sized feet. To get the ankkox through tree gaps too small to pass its huge shell where the trees were too large to overbear, Vaster would reach out with his goad, indicating specific points on their trunks-which would be struck by some whirring object, invisibly fast, that impacted with enough power to shatter the trunks and let it pass: the creature's tail mace.
The only part of the ankkox's body that was not armored was its extensile, muscular, surprisingly flexible tail. The tail was tipped with a thick round ball of armor, and an adult ankkox could snap its tail faster than the human eye could see, using that mace to accurately strike targets up to eight meters away with enough power to stun an akk dog or shatter a small tree.