Shatterpoint

"On second thought," Nick said, "I guess I don't mind staying with the ship." Hammers pounded the gunship into a bucking spin as the militia ship that had stayed back on high cover finally joined the dogfight, and the one they had left behind rose beneath them. Mace worked the controls savagely, whirling the gunship through evasive gyrations more suitable for a starfighter than for an antique blastboat; the port turbojet took a pair of cannon-blasts, and Mace's next whirl proved too much for its damaged mounting. It tore free in a scream of tortured metal. The ship roared through an uncontrolled spin.

"Take it easy!" Nick shouted.

Mace muttered, "I don't do easy" "What?" "I said, shoot back?

"How? I can't even see them!" "You don't have to," Mace said as he pulled the crippled gunship into another corkscrew climb, trailing smoke and shredded durasteel. "Forget about aiming. Just decide" "Decide what?

Mace reached into the Force and sent a wave of calm down his connection with Nick.

"Don't aim," he said. "Decide what you want to hit. Fire where you know it is about to be!' Nick frowned thoughtfully. He turned deliberately away from his screens, and looked Mace in the eye. Bemusedly, absently, casually, he nodded, sighed, and triggered the gunship's cannons.

He was still wearing that same thoughtful frown when his cannon blasts shattered the starboard turret of the gunship below, then penetrated the inner hatch and blew the ship in half.

He said, "Wow." His calm vanished as quickly as it had come. "I mean, wowl Did you see that?" Mace kicked the limping gunship out of its climb and into a steep power-dive away from the last one. Slowed by their missing turbojet, they swiftly lost their lead as it dived to pursue them, and cannonfire raked their stern. Mace worked the repulsorlifts madly, making the ship jerk, leap, and spring in random directions like a monkey-lizard on raw thyssel. Fire from above pounded them, but Mace's wild maneuvers were preventing it from laying in the multiple precision hits needed to blast through the Turbostorm's heavy armor.

The lock-on alert screamed, and Nick's voice almost matched it. "Missiles incoming!" Mace didn't even bother to look. "Take care of them." The perfect confidence in his tone steadied Nick instantly. He flashed his brilliant grin. "Don't mind if I do." As the turrets rotated to the rear and roared back to life, Mace scanned the jungle toward which his limping ship dived. It was hard to get a sense of scale-he might have been only hundreds of meters above it, or as many dozens of kilometers. Then the swarming gun-metal specks of the balance of the militia fleet that swarmed above the canopy snapped the scene into perspective.

There-a thousand meters below, maybe more, the distress strobes flashed on the repulsor- packs that Kar and Chalk wore. A single gun-ship streaked to intercept them, then slowed.

And stopped, hovering.

And the minuscule figures of Chalk and Kar landed lightly on its roof.

A moment later its nose came up, angling straight for him. Mace nodded to himself and let the Force guide his dive into an interception course. He checked his screens. "Missiles?" "Handled." Nick's tone was so like the Jedi Master's that it might have been deliberate mockery.

Mace didn't mind. "There won't be more. He won't endanger that friend of his coming at us." "Urn, shouldn't we endanger that friend of his?" "No need." "How come?" "That's not his friend." Turret quads on the rising gunship blazed to life, and Mace gave the repulsorlifts a kick that jerked the Turbostorm a dozen meters above the line of dive so that the twin streams of particle-beam packets passed harmlessly beneath him to take the pursuing gunship full in the cockpit.

The explosion was impressive.

The rear two-thirds of the gunship trailed smoke on its way down to the jungle. The front third was the smoke the rear two-thirds trailed.

"That," said Mace Windu, "was shooting." Nick made a face. "Oh, sure. Chalk. I told you she can handle the heavy stuff. But you should see her in a gun fight. Pathetic. Just pathetic." "Get Depa's transponder code off your widescan, then get her on comm. We need to coordinate our next move." "I'm just glad to hear you have a next move." "How many friendlies do you count?" "Scan count on the droid starfighters. Woo. Sure you really want to know?" "Nick." "Two hundred twenty-eight." "Good." "Good? Good?

"To the lower left of your widescan, you'll find a joystick the size of your thumb. That's your designator control. Start designating droid starfighters as targets for our missiles. One missile per star-fighter, and don't save any. Do not-repeat: DO NOT-light them up until I give the order.

And do not designate anything other than a droid starfighter." "Not even, say, one of those sixty-seven gunships in our zone of engagement?" Nick pointed to the swarm of "friendlies" in a different part of the screen. "Because they seem to be taking a little interest in us, if you know what I mean. They are coming at us. In a hurry." "Sixty-seven? How many are on intercept vectors?" "Was I not clear on that? Maybe I should have said: By the way, have I mentioned that we're about to get our butts shot off?" "How many?" Nick gave a weak, half-hysterical giggle. "All of them." Mace Windu said, "Perfect." The regimental commander was designated CRC-09,'571. Haruun Kal was his third action in combat, and his first as regimental commander. At Geonosis, he had taken part as a battalion commander in the airborne infantry; his group had led the frontal assault on the Trade Federation battle globes. He had served, again as battalion commander, at the disastrous skirmish on Teyr. On board the Halleck, as the days awaiting action stretched toward weeks, he had drilled his brother troopers relentlessly, sharpening their considerable skills to the highest perfection that could be achieved, absent blooding his regiment in actual combat.

There had been blooding enough today, as a hornet cloud of droid starfighters swirled around his tiny fleet.

He had watched a third of his regiment die.

Some of the landers had been disabled rather than instantly destroyed, and they had been able to eject survivors: meteor swarms of space-armored troopers floating into low orbit, repulsorpacks sparking as they slowed and angled their minutes-long fall toward Haruun Kal's atmosphere. The surviving landers had not been able to keep all the droid starfighters engaged; there were plenty of starfighters left over to slaughter the men, as well.

They had flashed among the falling troopers with cannons blasting: silent streaks of scarlet lancing the black void with robotic precision, each hit leaving a broken corpse floating in the middle of an expanding globe of twinkling crystals, white and pink and blue-green: breath and blood and body fluids flash-frozen in the vacuum, shimmering and lovely in Al'har's light.

But the other troopers had not panicked; with polished fire discipline and plain raw courage, the falling troopers had turned upon the starfighters the weapons they carried upon their persons, coordinating their fire for greater effect. Three light repeaters, when turned upon the same starfighter, could break down its shields so that a single shot from a blaster rifle might disable an engine; groups of grenadiers scattered proximity-fused proton grenades in improvised mini-minefields; and when their weapons were exhausted, in desperation, men used their own bodies as weapons, manipulating their repulsorpacks to shove themselves into the path of starfighters whipping past at dogfight speeds. In such collisions, neither could hope to survive.

The troopers had not been fighting to defend themselves; they knew their lives were over.

But they had never stopped.

They were fighting for the regiment.

Every starfighter they took down was one less that might attack their brothers. CRC- 09,'571 was not particularly emotional, even for a clone, but he had watched their sacrifice with a hot swell in his chest. Men such as those made him proud to be one of them. His only drive was to discharge his duty; but he also nursed a secret desire to do something, to achieve something, that would be worthy of his men's astonishing heroism.

To hit back.

Which is why he felt a sting in his guts-what an ordinary man might call anger and frustration, but which CRC-09,'571 only barely noticed, and immediately dismissed-when his comm lit up with orders from General Windu.

Orders that his ships were to immediately cease fire.

Cease fire despite close pursuit by DSFs.

Despite three additional droid starfighter wings-192 units-closing on them from beyond the planetary horizon.

Despite sixty-nine Sienar Turbostorm gunships streaking up from the surface to intercept them.

His anger and frustration showed only in a certain hopeful tone when he demanded General Windu's verification code-perhaps this was an enemy, impersonating the general-and in the slight reluctance he felt to confirm, when the general's code came through correct.

General Windu, as far as CRC-09,'571 could determine, was ordering the clones to die. But CRC-09,'571 could no more disobey a lawful order than he could walk through armor plate.

As they hurtled down from the stratosphere above the Korunnal Highland, the guns on all the Republic ships fell silent.

Droid starfighters swarmed over them, weapons blazing.

As his lander was pounded from all sides by multiple cannon hits, CRC-09,'571 noticed an odd thing on his command-scan screen: some of the gunships below seemed to be firing on other gunships.

To be precise: sixty-seven of the gunships below seemed to be firing on the two that were in the lead.

These two did not return fire. They streaked at full power in a steep climb, scissoring side- to-side, heading straight for the mass dogfight so that the cannonfire which missed them-nearly all of it-blasted upward into the cloud of DSFs. Most of it passed harmlessly through, of course, not being aimed at the small agile craft, but several DSFs took blasts squarely, and exploded.

CRC-09,'571 frowned. He had a good feeling about this.

Not far below, in the open cockpit of one of the two gunships that were the targets of those behind, Mace Windu said, "All right, Nick. Light them up." "Yes, sir!" Nick Rostu flipped a single switch, and the droid brains of twenty-six different droid starfighters-one for each of the missiles remaining in the Turbostorm's launchers-felt the sudden internal alarm-buzz of sensors detecting a missile lock.

Coming from a friendly ship.

The droid brains found this puzzling, but not overly distressing; they were still focused on their primary mission, which was to destroy any and all Republic craft attempting to orbit or land on Haruun Kal. But they were programmed to monitor possible hazards, and each of them set some of their spare capacity to searching memory banks for any response programs that might be indicated in the event of missile-locks from friendly craft.

There weren't any.

This, the droid brains did find distressing.

And there was the issue of those laser blasts.

Only one second later, thirty-two additional droid brains among the swarm of starfighters had exactly the same experience.

Because all four of the Krupx MG3 mini missile launchers on Depa's gunship were fully loaded.

As the two gunships penetrated the perimeter of the sprawling dogfight, Mace said, "Fire." A Krupx MG3 tube could fire one missile every standard second; each MG3 had two tubes, which carried magazines of four mini-missiles apiece. The Sienar Turbostorm close-assault gunship had four Krupx MG3s: two forward and two aft. On Mace's command, both ships emptied their magazines. The gunships blossomed with fire and rocket exhaust.

Sixteen missiles per second roared twisting through the sky.

The dogfight became a tangled web of vapor trails.

In the gunship's open cockpit, Nick watched his widescan, whistling. "Wow. Those starfighters are quick." Mace said, "Yes." "Two thirds of our missiles are gonna miss altogether. No: three quarters. More. Damn, they're fast." "It doesn't matter." "What do you mean, it doesn't matter? It's just our butts, that's all! Not to mention those poor ruskakks in the landers." Mace Windu said, "Watch." Nick's estimate proved to be overly optimistic: of the fifty-nine missiles fired, only six found their targets. Three more were accidentally intercepted by DSFs which they were not locked onto. The rest were destroyed by the droids' inhumanly precise counterfire, or were simply evaded by the nimble craft; dozens flashed away into the sky until their propellant was exhausted and they began the long slow tumble to the surface.

However-as Mace had pointed out, down in the battered cavern base-droids were stupid.

That was not to say that they could not adapt to changing circumstances. They could, and did: often with a speed and decisiveness that no organic brain could match. These droids had comprehended they were under attack by "friendly" vessels before the initial flight of sixteen missiles had fully engaged their engines. An attack from a single friendly vessel might be a mistake, an accident, no more. But two vessels, both of whose transponder codes identified as friendly, had opened fire on them in a coordinated attack.

Without warning.

The droids would not wait for further attacks. They adapted with lightning speed, and remorseless droid logic.

And Nick Rostu, staring down into his widescan screen, didn't even notice his own jaw dropping farther and farther as first one, then a dozen, then a hundred and more, red scan-hits changed to blue. "They're going hostile," Nick murmured in awe.

"Yes." "All of them." "Yes." Two hundred and twenty-seven DSFs peeled off from the landers-whose silent guns had dropped them below the droid brains' threat horizon-and fell upon the sixty-nine Turbostorms in a tornado of destruction.

Gunships began to burn, and fall.

"You planned this?" "T^l? Iheres more.

"Yeah? What do we do now?" A dozen starfighters converged on them.

"Now," said Mace Windu, "we bail out." He took hold of Nick's belt. Nick stared at him in open horror. "Don't tell me."; "All right." A Force-pushed leap yanked them both out of the cockpit a full second before the gunship began to crumple under hundreds of cannon-hits; two seconds later it exploded, but by then Mace and Nick were already fifty-eight meters below and gaining speed, hurtling without benefit of repulsor-packs down through the dogfight's flame and smoke and airbursts.

Nick's shriek sank unheard under the windrush and explosions.

Mace mouthed, You told me not to tell you.

Nick spent much of the ensuing fall complaining in a loud-though inaudible-voice about having to end his young life as "some fraggin' niklde nut-brained Jedi Master's straight man." Free-falling, one hand keeping a tight grip on Nick's belt, Mace reached into the Force and felt for his lightsaber.

He found its familiar resonance far below. Nick stayed locked in a fetal ball, hugging his thighs to his chest in a white-knuckled death grip and shouting obscenities between his knees.

Though he had a tendency to tumble, his tight "cannonball" made him close enough to aerodynamically neutral that Mace could direct their fall by angling his own body.

They soared toward a target he could barely see: two kilometers below and a quarter-klick to the west, a gunship whirled toward the jungle in a flat spin, spewing thick black smoke. The DSFs were ignoring it, concentrating instead on the gunships that still fired and twisted and dodged in frantic attempts to evade them.

Depa was doing a fine job of appearing crippled and helpless.

Now and again some chunks of smoking durasteel or a hunk of re-pulsorlift would overtake Mace and Nick on their long, long fall, seeming to drift down past them at variously leisurely paces, according to their individual quotients of wind-resistance. No bodies passed them, though; Mace and Nick fell already at close to the terminal velocity of the human form.

On Haruun Kal, that was slightly less than three hundred kilometers per hour.

The gunships rate of fall was considerably slower; it only looked like it was going in out of control. Which was why, when Mace had towed Nick to within a few hundred meters above the gunship, a considerable exertion of his Force-strength was required to slow them enough to avoid a catastrophic splatter.

Nick had lifted his eyes only once, as they plummeted toward the roof armor of the gunship: just long enough to recall vividly what Mace had said about leaving a red smear on a windscreen. His head was tucked back securely between his knees when Mace brought them to a thumpingly unceremonious landing that sent them bruised and bouncing along the top of the spinning ship.

Mace's free hand lashed out with effortless accuracy and latched around the widescan sensor dish-mount; his other, still locked on Nick's belt, brought the young Korun to a stop facedown over what was still nearly a kilometer drop to the jungle.

"You. remember. back when we met?" Nick gasped breathlessly into the swirling winds.

"When you. just about broke my arm. with that fraggin' docking claw you use for a hand?" "Yes?" "I… forgive you." "Thank you." Mace hauled him up onto the gunship's roof. Nick wrapped both arms around the sensor dish mount. "You go on ahead," Nick told him. "I think I'll just lie here and shudder." Using the Force to steady himself on the spinning ship, Mace worked his way forward on hands and knees until he could peer into the cockpit over the rim of the wide lightsaber-cut that opened it to the air.

Chalk sat in nav; she looked up and swore. Vaster stood behind the cockpit chairs: his stare was cleanly fierce. Depa reached up to him from the pilot's chair with a warm welcoming hand on his. Her eyes were glazed with exhaustion and pain, but no surprise. "I thought you told me I'd only have to save your life once more." He said, "Excuse me." He rolled onto his back and reached behind his shoulders to grab the rim of the cut with both hands, then jackknifed and swung himself smoothly inside feet-first, without waiting to see if Vaster had gotten out of the way.

He had.

"Nick is on the roof," Mace said. "Open one of the bay doors for him." The troop bay doors of a Turbostorm swing out and down so they could be used as landing ramps. Depa keyed the starboard door to open halfway, making it into a kind of chute down which Nick could slide, then worked the controls to cancel the gunship's spin.

Mace nodded to the lorpelek, who now filled the cockpit doorway. "Kar: help him in." Why should I?

Mace was not interested in debate. He gave his head an irritated shake and waved Vaster aside. "I'll do it my." His voice trailed away, because Vaster had stepped aside, and Mace had moved to the doorway, and now he could see into the troop bay.

It was crammed with dead bodies.

Mace sagged sideways; only his shoulder against the jamb seal held him upright.

Depa had chosen a full ship.

His numbed brain couldn't count them properly, but he guessed there must have been twenty corpses in the bay: an infantry platoon. The pilot must have been young, excited, confident, sure of a glorious kill-so eager to get into the fight that he had sailed into battle without discharging his passengers. He had paid the price for that confidence; his corpse lay crumpled on top of what must have been the navigator's, just inside the cockpit door.

Mace's jaw hardened. He found his balance again, and stepped over their tangled lifeless legs to move deeper into the bay.

All of the corpses in the troop bay wore the militia Graylite body armor; most of the armor had been burned through in several places by close-range blaster bolts. Mace could too easily imagine inexperienced militia men-boys-turning their weapons on Depa as she moved from the cockpit into the bay. The effect of opening fire with energy weapons, point-blank upon a master of Vaapad, was mutely testified to by every charred ring around a finger-sized hole in the armor, and by the burned and lifeless flesh beneath.

Between surprise, panic, and cramped quarters, half of them had probably shot each other.

Several of the bodies bore the characteristic blackened gapes of lightsaber wounds, instantly cauterized by the blade that had opened them. Depa's handling of the ball-turret gunners had been more elegant than Mace's; brutally efficient, she had simply stabbed directly through the durasteel of the hatches, killing the men in their chairs.

The corpses still sat there, dead hands locked around the dual grips of their quads.

And, of course, the smell: seared flesh and ozone.

There was no blood. No blood at all.

Every single one of these men had been dead before she'd ever picked up Chalk and Kar Vaster. Twenty-four men.

In less than a minute.

Mace turned around, and found Kar Vastor staring at him, fiercely triumphant.

He growled simply: She belongs here.

Mace silently turned away and climbed the half-open door to help Nick into the troop bay.

Sliding down the door into that compartment full of dead men struck Nick speechless. He could only crouch with his back against the slant of the door, trembling.

Mace left him there. He brushed past Vastor and reentered the cockpit. "Chalk. Give me your seat." The Korun girl frowned at Depa. Depa nodded. "It's okay, Chalk. Do it." As soon as he could settle into the seat, he leaned over the sensor screens, studying them intently. He felt Depa's eyes upon him, but he did not lift his head.

"You can say it, if you like," she said after a moment. "I don't mind." Keeping half his attention on the widescan to watch the droid starfighters shoot down gunship after gunship, Mace turned the other half of his attention to the gunship's data logs, calling up flight plans. Control codes.

Recognition codes.

"Really, Mace, it's all right," she said sadly. Half-blind with migraine, her breath coming a little short, she blinked dizzily through the remainder of the windscreen. "I know what you're thinking." Mace said quietly, "I don't believe you do." "It's not that my way is the right way. I know it isn't." A soft, bitter laugh. "I do know it. But it's the only way." "The only way to what?" "To win, Mace." "Is that what you call what you have done? Winning?" She nodded exhaustedly out toward the dogfight that still raged above them. "This battle is a masterpiece. Even after everything I have seen you accomplish, I could never have believed something like this if I hadn't seen it myself. You have done a great thing, today." "Today's not over yet." "And yet it's all for nothing. At this day's end, what will you have done? Destroyed most of the militia's airpower? So what?" Her voice was going hoarse, and her words became labored, as though she could not bear the effort to push them out through her pain. "You have bought us days. Perhaps weeks. No more. When you're gone, we'll still be here. We'll still be dying in the jungle. The Balawai will get more gunships. As many as they need. And we'll go back to killing them. We have to make them fear the jungle. Because that fear is our only real weapon." "Not today." "What? I-what do you mean?" "I have decided," Mace said, still studying the sensor screens, "that you have been right all along." Depa blinked in disbelief. "I have?" "Yes. We used these people for our purposes; to abandon them now, when their only choice is to suffer genocide, or to commit it?" Mace shook his head grimly. "That would be as dark as any night in this jungle. Darker. That is no innocent savagery. It would be active evil: the way of the Sith. There is fighting to be done. The Jedi cannot walk away." "You-you're serious? You really mean it?" Disbelief struggled with hope in her pain- wracked eyes. "You're going to walk away from the Clone War? You're going to stay here and fight?" Mace shrugged, still watching the scan. "I will stay here and fight. That doesn't mean walking away from the Clone War." "Mace, the Summertime War isn't something that can be resolved in weeks-or months-" "I know that," he murmured distractedly. "I don't have weeks or months to spare. The Summertime War won't last that long." "What? How can you say that? How long do you think it will last?" "My best guess? About twelve hours. Maybe less." She could only stare.

And finally, he saw on the widescan screen what he'd been waiting for: the droid starfighters peeling away from the dogfight and streak ing back toward space, and the handful of surviving gunships turning to limp home.

"See that?" he said, opening his hand toward the screen. "Do you know what that means?" Depa nodded. "It means that someone figured out what we did." "Yes-and that this someone has the control codes for those starfighters." He turned toward her now, and in his eye was a spark that on another man would have been a wide fierce grin. "I told you: I don't have weeks or months to spare." "I don't understand-What are you doing to doT Mace said, "Win." He keyed the command frequency for the Republic landers. "General Windu for CRC- 09,'571. Stand by for verification and orders. Initiate simultaneous data link. Tightbeam." The comm crackled. "Seven-One here. Go ahead, General?

Depa was so astonished by the orders she heard Mace issue that she nearly crashed the Turbostorm into a mountain. When she had finally wrestled the craft back to stability, she flipped on the autopilot and faced her former Master breathlessly. "Are you insaneT "Just the opposite," Mace said. "Haven't you heard? There's nothing more dangerous than a Jedi who has finally gone sane." She sputtered like a droid with a shorted-out motivator.

"And if you don't mind, I'd like my lightsaber back," he added apologetically. "I think I'll need it." "But-but-but-" Finally the words burst out of her. "We're going to take Pelek Bawl1" "No," said Mace Windu. "We are going to take the whole system. All of it. Right now." DEJARIK I he ic key to the Gevarno Loop was the Al'har system. The key to Al'har was control of the droid starfighter fleet. The fleet was controlled from a secure transmitter below the command bunker of the Pelek Baw spaceport.

The spaceport did have a chance. But only one.

Two of the landers and their complements of troopers had been grounded at the Lorshan Pass, to establish a defensive perimeter around the lone open grasser tunnel, and to provide light artillery support. The other ten hopped over the mountains and kept going at their top atmospheric speed, which was not particularly impressive, but was still somewhat better than could be done by the few battered Turbostorms that were limping back to their various bases, scattered among the larger towns close by on the Highland.

Only one of the gunships went as far as Pelek Baw.

It crept over Grandfather's Shoulder on one-quarter repulsorlift power, leaking smoke and radiation. The tower officers at the spaceport listened in horror to the pilots gasping message: a reactor breach. Imminent catastrophic failure. The pilot had heroically kept his craft in the air, making for Pelek Baw, because only the spaceport itself was fully equipped for containment and decontamination-to have landed anywhere else might have meant the sacrifice of his crew, and of the infantry platoon on board.

The news leaped like lightning from the tower to the ground staff, from the anti-rad techs to the bored garrison crews working the spaceport's Confederacy-provided array of modern turbolasers and ion cannons; this was the most exciting thing that had happened since the Separatist pullback. The battle at the Lorshan Pass had been astonishing, even tragic, but that was all the way on the other side of the Highland, and so didn't really count.

Every eye in the spaceport watched the Turbostorm, either in person or on screen, rooting for it, praising the crew's selfless courage as it swung wide around the city so as not to endanger civilians below, some praying aloud that they would make it, many more secretly hoping to witness a spectacular crash- Instead of tending to their duties, such as monitoring their sensor screens.

After all, why should they? The spaceport was linked in realtime with the network of detector satellites in orbit around the planet; nothing was in the air right now except the twenty- odd surviving gunships. The last of the droid starnghters had returned to space hours ago, and the Republic landing craft which had caused so much excitement had vanished shortly thereafter.

No one was worried about those landers. After the staggering 40 percent losses they had suffered, the Republic ships surely would seek no further battle. Without a doubt, they were hiding in the "soup"-the thick oceanic swirl of toxic gases that surrounds the Highland plateau-until a cruiser could sneak in-system to extract them. Without a doubt.

This was a considerable display of confidence on their part, because those same detector satellites on which they depended were as out of date as the rest of the local government's planetary equipage. Their IR and visual-light detectors were useless to penetrate the thick hot swirl of the "soup," and the satellites' more subtle sensors were defeated by the extremely high metals content of the gases. Once the landers went deep enough, they effectively vanished from the face of the planet.

Which is why any sensor tech at the Pelek Saw spaceport with the discipline to keep his eyes on his short-range screen might have seen indications of something extraordinary.

Pelek Baw spread along the western shore of the Great Downrush, the mightiest river on Haruun Kal. The Downrush was fed by tributaries from across the Highland-from as far east as the Lorshan Pass, and as far north as the lands above the impassable cliffs called the Trundur Wall. By the time the great river reached the capital, it was a full kilometer wide. Its dramatic roaring spray-clouded plunge from the terminal cliffs that formed the southern boundary of the city was one of the great natural wonders of the sector: it foamed and misted and spread as it fell kilometer after kilometer, becoming a snowy fan that stirred the roiling "soup" below into wild fractal whirls and blooms of colorfully immiscible gases.

What the sensor tech would have seen, had he been disciplined and duty-conscious enough to still be looking into his short-range screen, was ten Jadthu-class Republic landers climbing, straight up, within the Downrush Falls-single file, battered by the thundering water, but perfectly cloaked from long-range detection. If the sensor tech had seen that, the outcome might have been different.

That was the only chance they would have had.

But the sensor techs' attention was caught up in the drama of waiting to see if the crippled gunship could possibly struggle in for a landing before it blew up.

Not to mention the fact that a second or two before it would have touched down, it opened fire on the guardhouses surrounding the spaceport's control center, and an instant later seven immense half-naked Korunnai with shaven heads leaped from it, landing on the permacrete like pouncing vine cats, and charged toward the control center with their hands full of blaster rifles spitting fire.

And that these unexpected Korunnai were followed by a man and a woman bearing what was unquestionably the single most conspicuous and instantly recognizable type of personal weapon in the entire galaxy, and the type least welcome when it appeared on the opposing side.

The Jedi lightsaber.

So flustered were the spaceport's crew, that not a being among them even bothered to look up until the very moment the light of Al'har upon their positions was eclipsed by the shadows of hovering Jadfhu-cl&ss landers.

Then they did look up: in time to see ten durasteel clouds burst in a rain of armored clone soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic, whose arrival was so swift, efficient, and disciplined-and in such overwhelming force-that the antiship emplacements were taken without the loss of a single trooper.

The same, however, could not be said of the militia crewmen. The clone troopers, being unsentimental about such things, did not even bother to wipe the blood off the walls and floors before replacing the crews with their own men.

The fighting at the control center was hotter, and lasted a few seconds longer, but the outcome was the same-because the attackers were Akk Guards and Jedi, and the defenders were, after all, only ordinary beings.

The capture of the Pelek Baw spaceport took less than seven minutes from the instant the gunship opened fire, and resulted in the capture of 286 military personnel, of whom thirty-five were seriously wounded. Forty-eight were killed. Sixty-one civilian employees of the spaceport were detained unharmed. All of the spaceport's aerospace defense units were captured intact, as were all spacecraft then on site.

Taken together with the Battle of Lorshan Pass, the capture of the Pelek Baw spaceport would have been considered one of the masterstrokes of General Windu's distinguished career, if only the rest of the operation had gone as planned.

But it is a truism that no battle plan long survives contact with the enemy. This one was no exception.

Mace didn't even have to leave the command bunker to watch everything start to go wrong.

The command bunker was a large, heavily armored hexagon in the middle of the spaceport's control center, filled with angled banks of consoles. The only illumination in the room was spill from the console monitors and the huge rectangular holoprojector views that dominated each of the six walls; the general gloom thickened below console-height so that everyone inside waded hip-deep in shadow. Dead space below the wall screens was currently serving as a holding area for prisoners, as well as a makeshift aid station where wounded men and women sat or lay while clone troopers dispassionately tended their injuries.

Kar Vaster and his Akk Guards paced the perimeter of the room, restless as the wild animals they so nearly were. The Force swirled around them as they stalked among the terrified prisoners; Mace could feel them drawing on the prisoners' fear and pain and anguish, gathering it into themselves, storing it like living power cells.

Mace hadn't asked what Kar was planning to do with that power. He had a more pressing problem.

In the darkest corner of the room stood an armored console, separated from the rest; it wore a codelocked cowl of durasteel to prevent tampering. This console was a late addition to the command center, having been installed by specialists from the Techno Union at the same time they had modernized the spaceport defenses. It was called the mutiny box, and contained individual triggers for each of the destruct charges built into every turbolaser and ion cannon, every strongpoint and anti-starfighter turret.

It seemed the Confederacy did not trust that the justice of its cause was sufficient to ensure the loyalty of its troops.

In the shadow of this console, on a makeshift pallet made of seat cushions ripped from nearby chairs, lay Depa Billaba, nearly blind with pain. She had been weakening ever since the seizure of the command center, and now she lay with one arm covering her eyes. Blood trickled from one side of her mouth, where she had gnawed her lip raw.

Troopers controlled all the essential stations in the command center. Several of them had removed their helmets to accommodate ear pieces or goggles; Mace avoided looking in their direction. Empty helmets sitting on the consoles too closely resembled the full one he had left on the arena sand at Geonosis.

Mace stood at the satellite console. At one shoulder stood Nick, breathing out a continuous whisper of obscenities. At his other was the stolidly motionless presence of CRC-09,'571.

CRC-09,'571 was still wearing his helmet. This made it easier for Mace to talk to him. He didn't particularly want to see the commander's face.

He remembered too well the first time he had seen it. Just knowing that face was there, under the smoked mask of the helmet, was like a mocking finger tapping on the back of his head to remind him of Geonosis. Of everything that had happened there.

Of everything his failure had begun.

He did not want to be reminded of Geonosis. Especially not now.

He couldn't take his eyes from the monitor. Onscreen was the realtime display from the detector satellites in geosynchronous orbit.

"Seven-One." The clone commander's voice crackled through his helmet speaker. "Sir." "Get the landers' engines hot. All of them." "We never shut them down, sir." "All right." Mace's habitual frown deepened. "If we go, we'll need to give them plenty of targets. Initiate start-up on every ship in the port. Every one that's armed gets a gunner. How many of your men are qualified pilots?" "All of them, sir." Mace nodded. "Detail your best-no." He scowled at himself. Though many of the craft in the spaceport carried some armament, only the landers themselves were actual warships. This would be virtually a suicide mission. "Ask for volunteers." "It would be the same, sir." "I'm sorry?" "We always volunteer, sir. All of us. It's who we are." "Your best, then." "Yes, sir." CRC-09,'571 turned aside to issue crisp orders on his helmet's command-comm.

Nick stopped cursing long enough to ask, "Are we leaving?" "No time," Mace said, still staring into the screen.

It showed the airspace over Pelek Baw.

"It's that bad?" Nick spread his hands. "I mean, you've got a plan, right? You've got some trick to get us out of here?" "No more tricks," Mace said.

The sky was full of droid starfighters.

Incoming.

"How long do we have?" Mace shook his head again. "Seven-One. We hold the ranking militia officer, yes?" "Yes, sir. Major Stempel." "Get him." CRC-09,'571 saluted stiffly. Mace acknowledged his salute with a wave of dismissal, and the clone commander strode away toward the huddle of prisoners.

"What good is he gonna do us?" Mace pointed to a console a few meters away. "You see that? That is linked by landline to a secure transmitter beneath this bunker. Which is the only one on this planet that can send orders to those starfighters; that's the reason this bunker is a bunker. Whoever called them in had to be here." Nick nodded, understanding. "The control code." CRC-09,'571 returned, accompanied by two troopers who held between them an ashen- faced trembling man in the sweat-stained uniform of a militia major. "Major Stempel, I am Mace Windu," Mace began, but the shaking man cut him off.

"I–I know what you want. But I can't help you. I don't know it! I swear. I never knew it.

The codes are on a datapad-it's just a big personal datapad in an armored shell. He carries it with him. I didn't even know what he was doing-he just ordered me to relay his signal through the control console-" Mace closed his eyes, and put his hand to his forehead.

He felt a headache coming on.

"Of course. I should have expected this," he muttered to himself. "I keep forgetting that he's smarter than I am." "He? He who?" Nick demanded. "Who is this he you keep talking about?" "Priority signal incoming," the trooper at the comm board announced. His helmet rested on the console at his elbow; a cybernetic headset hung across his brow and down one side of his jaw, but even so, when he looked back it was Jango Fett that Mace saw.

"He says his name is Colonel Geptun," said this stranger with the face of a dead man. "He's asking for you, General. He's calling to accept your surrender." An immense, bluishly-translucent Lorz Geptun smiled his well-fed lizard smile down into the command bunker from the main holoprojector view. His khaki uniform shirt was again impeccably starched, and his aluminum-colored hair was swept back from his forehead.

"General Windu." He spoke with the same cheery lilt. "When last we met, I had no idea I was entertaining such a distinguished Jedi Master. Not to mention famous. It's an honor, sir.

How was your trip upcountry?" Depa was sitting up now, leaning on a desk, staring dazedly up at the screen. The light cast by Geptun's image threw black shadows that swallowed her eyes.

Kar and his Akks still paced. The clones stood motionless.

"I take it," said Mace Windu, "that you did not get my message." "Message? Oh, the message. Yes, yes, quite. My Jedi Problem and all. Very thoughtful.

Most appreciated." "Then you didn't believe it." "Should I have?" "You had the word of a Jedi Master." "Ah, yes. Honor, duty, justice. The flavor of the month. I can't imagine why I wouldn't simply take the word of a Jedi Master. Really, what could I have been thinking? Mmm-by the way, how is Master Billaba? Hasn't found the mass murders of our citizens to be a strain on her health, has she?" "You," said Mace Windu, "said something about surrender." Geptun's lips pressed together as though he tasted something sour. "Really, Master Windu, it's not every day a man in my position achieves such a resounding victory. In any civilized society, I should be permitted a moment to savor it." "Take all the time you want. Call back when you're finished." "Ah. Quite. After all, I didn't call to gloat. Well, not entirely. So. This is your situation.

"There are several hundred droid starfighters over your position. Anything that takes off from the spaceport will be shot down without warning. Anything airborne throughout the capital district, in fact. Meanwhile-oh, by the way, have I complimented you on your maneuver at the Lorshan Pass? Brilliant, Master Windu. Truly a work of art. You must be quite the dejarik player." His pale eyes sparkled gleefully. "I have been known to indulge in the game myself.

Perhaps-should our discussion today end profitably for us both-we might have a match some time." "Isn't that what we've been doing?" Without a sideways glance or change of expression, Mace sent a pulse in the Force down the connection he had forged with Nick Rostu. The young Korun's eyes widened, then narrowed; his face went blank, and he turned away to speak softly to a nearby trooper.

"In a way, Master Windu. In a way. So. Where was I? Yes: Meanwhile, back at the Pass.

I have fifteen thousand regulars on the ground. And while your clever bit of droid-baffling cost me almost fifty gunships, I have some left. Several, in fact. Of which twenty or so are already at the Lorshan Pass, and have already made a bloody mess of your landers and your defensive perimeter. I'm told your surviving troopers still hold the mouth of the tunnel, but of course they won't for long. I imagine their next move will be to mine the tunnel, and collapse it like you did the others. Which works for me; I have sappers clearing the other tunnels already. We'll be inside within the hour. Which is exactly how long you have to save your people." "An hour." STARWARSlSHAIItKPUINI "Ah, no: you misunderstand. I am plagued by unreliable subordinates; perhaps you can sympathize. My troops are not so disciplined as yours. They are young men, after all, and their blood is up. It may take them an hour to get inside. It may take them ten minutes. Once they enter those caves, I should be very much surprised if any Korun leaves that place alive." "Geptun-" "Colonel Geptun." '-there are over two thousand civilians in there. The old, and the very young. Would you have your men slaughter children?" "There is only one way to stop them," Geptun said regretfully. "I must give them the order to stand down before they breach those caves." "And for that, you want our surrender." u't'tr? Yes.

"There are," Mace said slowly, "civilians in here, as well." "Of course there are." Geptun's smile broadened. "Civilians that you, Mace Windu, would give your life to protect. I cannot be bluffed. Not by you." Mace lowered his head.

"Don't take it too hard, General. In dejarik, part of true mastery is recognizing when a game is lost." Geptun cleared his throat delicately. "You have, sad to say, only one move left: to resign." "Give us a a little time." Defeat had leaked into Mace's voice. "We-we'll have to talk it over-" "Ah, time. Of course. Take as long as you like. It's not actually up to me, is it? My sappers are quite, shall we say, gifted? They could break through at any moment. It would be-mmmm, ironic-if your surrender were to come too late to save all those innocent lives." "Yes." Mace's voice was subdued. "I'll call back on the same frequency." "I look forward to it. It's been a pleasure playing against you, Master Windu. Geptun out." The image on the huge wallscreen faded. Silence shrouded the room.

Depa tottered to her feet. "Mace." Her voice trickled off into a whimper of pain; she lowered her head and clenched her jaw, pulling herself together by sheer willpower. "Mace, we can't let the militia kill those people. Your people-" "My people," said Mace Windu, "are Jedi." He lifted his head, and he didn't look beaten at all. "Nick." Nick Rostu looked up from the console where he was huddled with a pair of troopers, and his eyes sparkled. "Got him. The Ministry of Justice. Pegged him with his own bloody satellites!" Depa looked stunned; Kar Vastor's face birthed a predatory grin.

Mace nodded. "Depa. Time to fight. Are you strong enough?" She passed a hand before her face, and her gaze sharpened for a moment, but then she sagged, holding herself up with one hand while the other pressed against her temple. "I–I think so, Mace-but it's too, too-there's so much." The ragged exhaustion in her voice twisted in his stomach like a knife. "All right. Stay here." "No-no, I can fight-" "Perhaps you can. But I can't, while I know that you're about to collapse. You're staying.

That's an order." He turned away. "Nick: you're with me. Get Chalk and meet me at the gunship." Nick jumped for the door, then jerked to a stop, whirled, and made a credible attempt at a salute that he ruined with a smirk and a one-armed shrug. "Sorry: forgot." Mace acknowledged his salute, and Nick vanished through the bunker's doorway.

"Mace-" Depa struggled toward him, and reached out as though to take his hand from across the room. Kar Vaster strode up behind her, arms out to catch her if she fell. "You can't-you won't have a chance. They'll shoot you down before you clear the landing field." "They won't shoot me down. I'm not going up. That gunship is about to become Haruun Kal's largest landspeeder. Nick knows the streets. He can get us where we need to go." She half-fell toward the nearest chair; Vaster caught her and low ered her gently into it. She winced a rueful thanks up at him, and placed her hand on his before turning back to Mace.

"You're going after the Colonel-?" "I don't need him. I need that datapad." "What will you." Her eyes drifted closed, and she had to force the words out. Kar squeezed her hand, and a half a smile flowed across her lips before draining into the burn scar at the corner of her mouth. "What will you do. with Geptun?" Mace stared at them: Depa Billaba and Kar Vaster.

He had to go. He had to leave her behind. Let her stay. With him.

He might never see her again.

He couldn't make himself say good-bye.

In the end, all he could do was answer her question. "Colonel Geptun is a dangerous man," he said. "Exceedingly dangerous. I'll probably have to kill him." He frowned, and tipped his head in a Korun shrug. "Or, possibly, offer him a job." INFERNO T

wilight.

Turbolaser batteries cast building-sized shadows across the darkening plain of permacrete.

Silent clones sat behind the plated shields of antistarfighter duals and quads; the only sound was a soft whine of servomotors as computer-tracked cannons traced the motion of droid starfighters still too high to be more than bright specks in the setting sun.

A tiny noise-a half-swallowed whine of pain and frustration-brought Mace's attention up from the gunship's preflight checklist. Chalk was struggling with the nav chair's seat straps; her tightly bandaged wounds wouldn't let her twist far enough to reach the length control. Her face had gone so pale that her freckles stood out like grease-splatters, and a streak of blood reddened the sheath of bandages around her chest.

"Here, let me." Mace adjusted the strap length and buckled her in. He frowned at the blood on her bandages. "When did this happen?" Chalk shrugged, avoiding his eyes. "On the jump, maybe. At the Pass." "You should have said something." She pushed his hands away and busied herself with weapons checks. " "M okay. Tough girl, me-" "I know you are, Chalk. But your wounds-" "Don't have time to be hurt, me." She nodded up through the oval lightsaber-cut gap in the windscreen. Far above the city, the setting sun struck sparks from the impossibly complex shimmerfly dance of the droid starfighters. "Are in danger, people. People I love. Can hurt later, me." The fierce conviction in her voice gave Mace pause. An inventory of his own wounds flickered through his mind: his concussion that was giving him this headache, his cracked ribs, his sprained ankle that had him limping, the infected blaster-burn on his thigh, the spray-bandaged bite wound that Vaster had given him, not to mention all his minor cuts and the bruises that covered so much of his body it was hard to tell one from the next.

And yet he fought on, and would fight on. Wounds? Right now he could barely feel them.

Because someone he loved was in danger.

"When this is over," he said, nodding his understanding, "you and I will check into a med center. Together." The smile she gave him showed only a trace of pain. Nick poked his head through the cockpit doorway. "Looks like we're a go-hey, look at this" he said with a sudden frown, staring out through the windscreen.

Through the shadows slashing the landing field loped Kar Vaster. His shields flashed eye- stinging highlights from the glowpanel dayfloods that now, with sunset passing, shone upon the ships. He waved as he ran, clearly asking Mace to wait for him.

"What, does he want to fight again or something?" Nick brightened. "Y'know, we could just shoot him-accidentally, like. One of those senseless weapons-check tragedies-" "Nick." "Yeah, yeah." Without expression, Mace watched Vaster approach. Only moments ago-just before he left the command bunker to come out here-he had pulled aside CRC-09,'571 for a private conversation. "Your orders come only from me, do you understand?" he had told the clone commander. "I want you to be absolutely clear on that." CRC-09,'571's helmet had tilted to a quizzical angle. "But Master Billaba-" "Has been relieved of her duties. As has Kar Vaster." "And his men, sir?" "They have no military rank or authority." "Would the general like them disarmed and restrained?" Mace had grimly surveyed the cramped quarters of the command bunker, crowded with troopers and prisoners. In his mind, he saw twenty corpses in a gunship's troop bay. "No. I'm not sure you can. But watch them. They are not to be trusted. They may become violent without warning. They may try to harm the prisoners. Or possibly even you." "Yes, sir." "And get the prisoners out of here. Away from them. Not all at once. Make up some pretext, and start moving them out as efficiently as possible." "And if there is a confrontation, sir?" CRC-09,'571's dry voice had slowed, as though the commander were reluctant to even consider the possibility. "If they attack?" "Defend yourself, your men, and the prisoners," Mace had told him. "Use all necessary force." "Lethal force, sir?" Mace had stared at his own reflection in the commander's smoked eyeshield. He had to swallow once, hard, before he could reply.

"Yes." He'd had to look away; he'd found that reflection too dark for what he knew he had to say. "You are authorized to use lethal force." Out on the landing field, Vaster didn't bother to come around toward the troop bay doors; without breaking stride he burst into a Force leap that carried him up to the Turbostorm's nose below the cockpit with a clank that must have been his deactivated vibroshields getting in the way of his grab for the nose armor. He climbed up into view, settling himself into a crouch on the nose armor outside the windscreen.

He squatted there for a moment, forearms resting on his bent knees, staring gravely at Mace through the opening.

Mace, Jedi of the Windu. Even his growl was reluctant. Almost contemplative.

"Kar." We have not been friends, you and I. If we both survive this day, I suspect that again we will not befriends.

Mace only nodded.

We may not meet again. I would have you know that I am glad I did not kill you this afternoon. No one else could have done what you have done today. No one else could have brought us so far.

This, also, did not call for a reply. Mace waited.

Vastor's mouth compressed as though sharing this caused him pain, and his growl became almost a purr, low in his throat.

I would have you know that I am proud to be your doshalo. You are a credit to the Windu.

Mace took a deep breath. "You," he said, slow, coldly deliberate, M),? arent.

It was Vastor's turn to silently stare.

"I am not Mace, Jedi of the Windu. Windu is my name, not my ghosh. You and I are not doshallai. The Windu are no more, and what you have done disgraces their memory. My ghosh," said Mace Windu, "is the Jedi." He went back to his preflight checklist. "It would be good," he said distantly, "if you were to be gone when I get back." Vaster had turned his face toward the spiral dance of the starfight-ers as Mace spoke; he did not seem to hear. He stared upward as though listening to the stars. He passed a second or two in silence and stillness, then he nodded gravely and looked back at Mace.

Until we meet again, doshalo. He spun like a startled branch leopard and sprang down from the Turbostorm's nose to sprint away across the floodlit permacrete.

Mace flicked the last ten switches into flight sequence, and the Turbostorm rocked gently as its repulsorlifts brought it up to an altitude of just under a meter.

"Let's go." By the time the Turbostorm roared through the spaceport gates into the warehouse district of Pelek Baw, it was already doing over two hundred kilometers an hour. The lightsaber gap in the windscreen shrieked like a bad wailhorn in a third-rate smazzo band. Immense night-blackened blocks of warehouses crowded the right-of-ways for a kilometer or more north of the spaceport, but the streets themselves were empty. Mace intended to take advantage while he could.

Nick held on to the backs of Mace's and Chalk's chairs, squinting doubtfully up through the windscreen's gap. "Uh, y'know, if you don't mind my asking, are you sure those droid starfighters won't come down for ground vehicles as well?" "I'm sure." "But, I mean, how do you knowT "I'll show you." Mace heeled the Turbostorm over, using its thrusters to help negotiate a tight corner; it bounced jarringly off a warehouse hard enough to dent its armor and knock a steamcrawler-sized hole in the building's wall. He fought the controls and steadied the ship, then nodded forward along the long straight stretch of street.

Half a klick ahead, the gigantic slope-armored hulk of a ground assault vehicle clanked out from a side street.

Mace said, "That's how." Its turret was already rotated the quarter turn to bear on the Turbostorm and Mace said, "Chalk," but she was ahead of him: the quad turrets on both sides of the gunship burst to life and filled the street with streaking packets of energy- Which crashed into the GAV without even scratching it.

Nick was shouting, "You'll never breach that armor!" while Chalk was letting her gaze defocus and her hands relax on the split yoke. "Not shooting at his armor, me," she murmured and she held down the triggers as the GAV's cannon bucked with the launch of an armor- piercing shell- That met a laser blast nose-first while still inside the barrel.

The explosion was gratifying.

It left the cannon's barrel peeled back on itself in a spray of black ened durasteel twists, making the GAV look like a droid smoking an exploding cigar.

"Okay," Nick said. "Now I'm impressed." The GAV's gunners opened up with its heavy slug-repeater, making riding in the Turbostorm resemble having one's head inside a durasteel trash barrel that's being clubbed by a pack of drunken squibs. Slug impacts pounded prismatic dents across the transparis-teel windscreen.

Mace said, "Time to get off the street." "You can't!" Nick shouted. "They'll shoot us down!" "Off, not up. Open fire." Chalk held down the quad triggers. Mace yanked the control yoke to slew the Turbostorm sideways and sent full power of both quads against the warehouse beside them. A huge mouth, teeth of dura-crete dangling from reinforcing bars, suddenly gaped in the wall, and Mace rammed the gunship through the gap.

Inside the building.

"Yow!" "Know what you're doing, you?" "Keep firing." Cargo containers flashed by them to either side, lit red by the blaze of fire from their guns, then another cannon-blasted mouth opened in the opposite wall and they broke out into the next street over- Which was also full of militia.

At least a company of heavy infantry, with a couple of mobile artillery pieces and possibly more out there that Mace didn't have time to identify because he just kept the gunship roaring straight on through the middle of them and into the warehouse across the street before any of the astonished Balawai could so much as charge their weapons.

Blasting through buildings when they had to, zooming along open streets when they could, zigzagging and backtracking to find gaps in the tightening net of heavy armor that was rolling through the warehouse district, they fought their way out into the city, leaving a wake of astonished Balawai and an immense connect-the-dots trail of burning warehouses.

Sometimes, when things go wrong, they go wrong one at a time: a chain of misfortune that must be dealt with link by link. Those are the easy times.

Sometimes troubles come in a starburst.

When they had finally broken free from the warehouse district, Mace brought the gunship down to a walking pace. The evening thoroughfares of Pelek Baw were crowded as always, but beings of all species hastily stepped aside for the idling gunship cruising through the city at street level.

At least, whenever they stopped staring long enough to move.

"Nick. Do you know where we are?" The young Korun leaned around him to stare out the windscreen; off to their port side, the sky was red with the light of the fires they'd left behind. "So much for the element of surprise." "Nick." Nick shook his head dejectedly. "Don't you get it? They know we're coming now. The Ministry of Justice is like afortress. Hell, it is a fortress. Not even you can get in there. Not now. Now they'll be ready for us." Mace said, "They always were. That's all right: we're not going there." "Huh?" "Geptun is smart. Possibly too smart for his own good. He knows we'll come for him; it's the only move we have. That's why we tracked his signal so easily: he wants us to hit the Ministry of Justice. If he were really in the Ministry, he could have found a way to mask his signal. There won't be anything there except a very large number of troops. Or possibly only a very large bomb." "Then what are we fraggin' doing out here? Where is he?" "A place with electronics sophisticated enough to fake the origination data of a comm signal," Mace said. "I may not be the dejarik player our colonel is, but there's nothing wrong with my memory. The one time we met, it was on the occasion of the death of someone he described as an old friend." Nick's eyes narrowed. "Tenk." he breathed. "You think he's at the Washeteria." "Can you get us there?" "Sure. Simple. All you gotta do is bear northeast-" He was interrupted by Chalk's hand on his arm.

She gave him a sickly smile, and her throat worked as though she were struggling not to retch. "Maybe. maybe better-" She coughed wetly.

Blood spattered from her lips.

"Chalk!" Her fingers dug into his arm: a spasm. Her other hand was pressed to her side. Her face was gray, and her eyes looked foggy. "Maybe better take nav, you," she said, and slumped.

Her hand fell away from her ribs, revealing a ragged hole below her breast. She crumpled forward against the nav chair's safety straps. In her back was an exit wound Nick could have put his fist into. The chair-back had an even bigger hole, and the cockpit wall behind bore a splash of blood and tissue and shreds of black synth-leather.

Nick threw his arms around her, holding her head up, pleading with her empty eyes. "Chalk, no, not you, come on, not you too, come on, Chalk, please-" Mace looked at the windscreen: at the line of rainbow-ringed slug dents from that first GAV: a line punctuated by the lightsaber-cut gap-She had taken that slug minutes ago. Without a word. Without a sound. She had held on-had fought on- Because people she loved were in danger.

"The medical center-" Nick's voice had gone thick. "The medical center's only a klick or two from here-" Mace's decision did not take even a full second. General or not, he was still a Jedi. "Just tell me which way to go." "Okay. Okay." Nick tore himself away from Chalk and pointed toward an intersection ahead. "Okay, go left at the corner, then-" The street in front of them erupted like a chain of volcanos: explosions at the terminal points of scarlet particle beams that rained upon them from the night sky: aimed not at the street but at a hurtling dark shape that twisted through a barrel roll over the buildings before it took a direct hit and tumbled into a ball of debris-spewing fire that slammed an apartment block only a few dozen meters short of the Turbostorm.

The blast picked up the gunship and spun it down the street.

Of the unarmored groundcars, and the pedestrians, the taxicarts and street vendors, the elderly on their stoops and the children who had darted playfully around the tall lightpoles- Nothing was left but smoking rubble and twisted metal.

"What in the-" Nick reeled off an impressive string of obscenities. "-was thatT Mace wrestled the Turbostorm out of its spin and cut the engines; the ship skidded down the street trailing a fountaining tail of sparks. He leaned forward, his knuckles pale on the control yoke, and stared up through the windscreen.

"May the Force give me strength." he whispered: as close to a curse as he had ever come.

That hurtling dark shape had been one of the Incom Skyhoppers from the spaceport. The cannonfire that had rained on the street and brought down the skyhopper had come from droid starfighters.

The night sky was full of ships.

Above the city.

"Oh, Depa." Mace breathed.

More than four hundred thousand people lived in Pelek Baw. Drawing fire from the starfighters down upon it could put the entire capital to the torch.

No: not could.

Had.

The skyhopper wasn't the first ship to crash into the crowded streets of the capital tonight.

And there were over a hundred more, from tiny racing yachts to immense freighters.

He felt the city in the Force: a holocaust of flame and darkness.

Panic. Rage. Grief.

Horror.

There was nothing else left.

But the spaceport had a different feel entirely. "Depa, what have you doneT The comm panel chimed to announce an incoming voice-and-visual. Numbly, Mace reached past Nick and Chalk to hit the receive key. Scanning lasers in the comm unit traced a blue-lined image shadow on the windscreen: an electronic pre-echo of the larger-than-life holo-image projected into the burning night outside.

An image of a huge Korun with a shaven head and a smile like a mouthful of bone needles.

He growled, and Mace wondered how Vaster could expect to be understood-his Force- powered semi-telepathy wouldn't modulate a comm signal-but this little mystery instantly solved itself.

When the lor pelek growled, the dark storm that had swallowed Pelek Baw growled with him.

Thank you for giving us the city, doshalo. His smile spread like flames on oil. We have decided to redecorate.

Mace opened his mouth to ask for CRC-09,'571-and closed it again. The commander had been warned not to take orders from them.

They must have killed him.

"Kar, where's Depa?" Mace held his desperate horror locked deep inside his chest. "Let me talk to her." She doesn't want to talk to you. She doesn't want to see you. Ever. I have arranged matters so she won't have to.

"Kar, stop this. You have to stop this!" And I will. Vastor's lips pulled back from those needle teeth, and there was no longer even the pretense of a smile. When everyone is dead.

"You don't understand what you're doing-" Yes, I do. And so do you.

Mace's stare burned like the city around him.

He did understand. Finally. Too late.

He had no words for what he felt. Perhaps there were no words.

I called to say good-bye, doshalo. Depa will remember you fondly. As will we all. It is a hero's death you go to, Mace of the Windu.

Mace showed his own teeth. "I'm not dead yet." IlLfT OIU V Ll't't Vastor's blue-imaged head tilted a centimeter to the right. What time is it?

Mace froze.

A metallic clank echoed in his memory.

A clank that might have been deactivated vibroshields hitting the nose armor of a Sienar Turbostorm.

Or- Not.

"Nick. 1" Mace's sudden shout shocked the young Korun like a shot from a stun baton.

"Hang onf "Hang on to whatTT't'ti& arming levers on the seat ejectors flipped up; Nick swore and threw his arms around Chalk half a second before the triggers pressed themselves and explosive bolts blew the windscreen up and out and her chair shot toward the rooftops, out of balance and tumbling into the night sky as the time fuse on the proton grenade Vaster had mag-clamped to the Turbostorm's nose precisely where its shaped charge would blow a dozen kilos of shredded armor plate through the cockpit sideways- Detonated.

Mace found them by following his Force-link with Nick.

Double-loaded and out of balance, Chalk's ejector chair had carried them only as far as a black rooftop, flat and sticky with tar, before crashing to spill them across it. Flames from other buildings around lit its walls and cast its square shadow toward the stars.

Nick's silent silhouette knelt with bowed head beside her. His hand gently stroked bloody tangles of hair away from her face; tears from his eyes fell to her cheeks, as though death had finally allowed this tough girl to weep.

Mace stood at the roof's rim and looked out across the city.

His chair had carried him a dozen blocks away. He had come here on foot.

The streets were a nightmare.

Cannonfire rained at random. Missiles that had lost their targets blasted groundcars and streets vendor stalls. People ran and screamed. Many were armed. More carried bundles of valuables saved-more often looted-from burning buildings. Bodies lay sprawled on the pavement, ignored except for the curse they would get when someone tripped over them in blind panic.

He'd seen a little girl clutching the bloody tatters of a corpse's dress while she tried to scream life back into its body.

He'd seen a Wookiee and a Yuzzem locked together, clawing and biting and shredding each other, howls of terrified rage muffled by mouthfuls of each other's flesh and fur.

He'd seen a man not two meters in front of him chopped in half by a blasted-free hull plate that had fallen from the sky like a tabletop-sized cleaver.

From the rooftop, the capital of Haruun Kal looked like a night-shrouded volcanic plain: a vast dark field pocked with calderae that opened on hell. Clone-piloted ships streaked and spun and rolled, desperately dodging starfighters that swooped and dived and spat flame. In those contests it didn't matter who won; the city lost.

Pelek Baw had always been a jungle, but only in a metaphoric sense. Vaster had brought the real one.

He was the real one.

And he was eating this city alive.

"I always used to." Nick's voice was soft. Almost expressionless. Just slow, and faintly puzzled. He still knelt over her. "I used to, y'know, kind of think. y'know, maybe someday, when I leave this fraggin' planet." He shook his head helplessly. "I always kind of thought she'd be coming with me." "Nick-" "Not that I asked her, you understand. No. Not that I ever had the guts to say anything to her. About that. About-" He lifted his face to the cold distant stars. "About us. It just. it was just, y'know, just never the right time. And I kind of thought she knew. I hope she knew." "Nick, I'm sorry. I cannot tell you how sorry I am." "Yeah." Nick nodded slowly, pensively, as though each motion of his head welded another layer of armor around his grief. Then he sucked air through his teeth and shoved himself to his feet. "Lots of people are sorry tonight." He had her gunbelt in his hands.

He moved to the roof rim to stand beside Mace and look out across the burning city.

"They're all against us now," he said softly. "Not just the militia and the droids." "Yes." He buckled Chalk's gunbelt around his waist, and tied her holster down to his left thigh, to match his own on his right. "They've turned on us. All of them. Kar and his Akks. Depa. Even the clones." "The clones," Mace said distantly, "are only following orders." "Orders from our enemies." Now it was Mace's turn to lower his head: Mace's turn to nod layers of armor around his own grief. "Yes." "And on our side-it's us. You and me. Nobody else." He drew her gun, smooth and fast, checking its heft and balance. He popped the clip and snapped it back in. "Y'know, Kar saved her life." He spun the pistol forward, then reversed it so that its own spin slipped it snugly into the holster. "Temporarily." Mace murmured, "It's always temporary." He stared down into the pandemonium on the street. An armored groundcar filled with militia swung around a corner. The gunner on the roof-mounted EWHB-10 fired short bursts into the air to clear the road; some of the armed looters returned fire.

Nick said softly, "You got any idea what we're gonna do?" Before Mace could speak, Nick smiled tiredly and raised a hand. "Don't bother. I know what you're about to say." "I don't think you do." Mace gave the militia vehicle below a speculative frown.

"We're going to surrender." SURRENDER T

he Highland Green Washeteria was an imposing verdigris-domed edifice of gleaming white tile set off by obsidian grout. When the groundcar pulled up to it, its sign was dark and its elaborate array of arched windows were sealed by durasteel blast shutters.

A block away, the streets were choked with burning wreckage; here, all was dark and still.

The squad's noncom peered dimly through the groundcar's windscreen. "Dunno why the colonel'd be here" he said doubtfully.

"Maybe he wants a bath," Nick said dryly from the rear compartment, where he sat among the other four sweaty, tired-looking regulars. "Which wouldn't do any of you guys any harm either, I mean, shee." "He's here," Mace said from the front seat next to the noncom. "Let's get out." "I guess he could be here," the noncom admitted reluctantly. "Okay, everybody out." As the squad piled out onto the walkway, the noncom muttered, "I still think we shoulda tried the Ministry. And I probably oughta put binders on you, too." "There's no reason to go to the Ministry," Mace said. "And you don't need the binders." "Ahh, frag the binders anyway. Okay, let's go." The noncom tried the blast-shuttered door.

"Locked." Purple energy flared. Durasteel sizzled. White-hot edges dulled to red, then darkened entirely. Mace said, "No, it isn't." The noncom used the barrel of his blaster rifle as a pry bar to swing open the door. "Hey, what are you guys doing here?" The broad sculpted lobby of the Washeteria had been turned into a heavy-weapons nest. A platoon of militia crouched, squatted, or lay behind temporary barriers of expanded permacrete.

Tripod-mounted repeaters were levelled at the open door. The men's faces were drawn, their eyes round and haunted; here and there a rifle muzzle trembled.

An oddly familiar voice replied, "A guy might want to ask you the same question." "Well, I captured that Jedi everybody's looking for, didn't I," the noncom said. "Here, come on in." Mace stepped around the open door.

"You!" It was the big man from the spaceport pro-bi showers, and he didn't look frightened at all.

Mace said, "How's your nose?" The big man went for his sidearm with an impressively swift draw.

Mace's was faster.

By the time the big man's blaster cleared his holster, Mace was staring at him past the sizzling purple fountain of his blade. "Don't." Nick said, "You guys know each other?" The big man held the blaster steady, aimed at Mace's upper lip. He said sourly, " Capturedhim, did you?" "Uh, sure, Lieutenant-" The noncom blinked uncertainly. "Well, okay, they surrendered, but it's the same thing, right? I mean, he's here, ain't he?" "Stand away from them. All of you. Right now." The squad scattered.

Mace said, "I need to see Colonel Geptun." "Y'know, that's a funny thing." The big lieutenant squinted past his blaster's sights. "Because he don't want to see you. He told me specifically. About you. He said you might show up here. He said you're supposed to be shot on sight." "Shooting at Jedi," Mace said, "is a losing proposition." "Yeah, I've heard that." "Lieutenant, do you have a family?" The officer scowled. "None of your business." "Have you looked outside recently?" The big man's jaw tightened. He didn't answer. He didn't have to.

Mace said, "I can stop it. Those ships your droids are chasing are piloted by men under my command. But if something were to happen to me…" The big man's chin drew down stubbornly. His men frowned at each other; some bit their lips or shifted their weight. One of them said doubtfully, "Hey, Lou, y'know-I got two kids, and Gemmy's up with another-" "Shut it." "Your choice is straightforward," Mace said. "You can follow orders and open fire. Most of you will die. And your families will be left out there. Without you. And without any hope other than that their deaths might be quick.

"Or you can bring me to Colonel Geptun. Save hundreds of thousands of lives. Including your own.

"Do your duty. Or do what's right. It's up to you." The big man ground out his words between clenched teeth. "You know the last time I could breathe okay?" he growled, pointing at his nose. "Guess. Go on. Guess." "Yours is not the only nose I've broken on this planet," Mace said evenly. "And you deserved it more than he did." The big man's knuckles whitened on the blaster.

Mace lowered his lightsaber but kept its blade humming. "Why don't you call the colonel and ask? It is possible," he said with half a nod back toward the bloody chaos outside, "that he has changed his mind." The lieutenant's scowl thickened until it broke under its own weight. He shook his head disgustedly and let his gun arm fall to his side. "They don't pay me enough for this." He came out from behind the permacrete barrier and went to the house comm at the hostess desk. A brief conversation went on in undertones. When it was over, he looked even more disgusted. He returned his blaster to its holster and waved his empty hand at his men. "Awright, stand down, everybody. Put 'em away." While his men complied, he walked over to Mace. "I'll need your weapons." From behind Mace's shoulder, Nick said, "You don't have to take our weapons." "Don't quit your day job, kid." The lieutenant held out his hand. "Come on: I can't bring you down there armed." Mace silently handed over his lightsaber. Nick flushed while he dangled his pistols from one finger through each trigger guard.

The lieutenant took both pistols in one hand, and weighed Mace's lightsaber in the palm of the other. He gave it a thoughtful frown. "The colonel said you're Mace Windu." "Did he?" The officer looked the Jedi Master in the eye. "Is it true? You're really him? Mace Windu?" Mace admitted it.

"Then maybe I don't mind the nose so much." The big man shook his head ruefully. "I guess I'm lucky to be alive at all, huh?" "You," Mace said, "should consider a new line of work." The entrance to the Republic Intelligence station was a waterproof hatch; it was disguised as part of the checkered tile pattern on the bottom of a steaming mineral bath fed by the natural hot springs below the Washeteria. The lieutenant led Mace and Nick to a wading-stair from the deck down into the shallow end. Two sweating regulars brought up the rear, rifles slanted across their chests.

Nick made a face. "Stinks in here. People really want to go in that?" "Not many, I bet," the big man said. "If they did, it wouldn't make a real good secret entrance, would it?" A concealed latch opened a code panel that swung down from the stair rail. The lieutenant tucked Mace's lightsaber under his arm so he could punch some keys, and the field generator built into the stairs and the pool floor hummed to life. An electric crackle heralded the opening of a channel; walls of sizzling energy held back the sul-furously steaming water. Toward the deep end the channel became a tunnel. Another code panel opened the waterproof hatch, and openwork stairs with drains beneath them led down into a dry, brightly lit room filled with the very latest electronic surveillance, code-breaking, and communications equipment.

A handful of people in civilian clothes monitored the various stations like they knew what they were doing. There was an undertone of insistent muttering, and many of the console monitors showed only snow.

The lieutenant showed them to a small gloomy chamber with holoviewer walls and a heavy lammas table in the center. The only light in the chamber came from the holoviewers: they showed realtime images of the city. The ceiling sparkled with swooping droid starfighters and the hurtling ships they pursued. Burning buildings cast a dull flickering rose-colored glow that silhouetted a small plump man seated at the far end of the table.

"Master Windu. Please come in." Geptun's voice was thin, and the self-deprecating chuckle he offered had a fragile edge. "It appears that I miscalculated." Mace said, "We both did." "I never suspected that Jedi could be capable of such. savagery." "Neither did I." "People are dying out there, Windu! Civilians. Children." "If your concern for children had included Korunnai, we wouldn't be here right now." "Is that what this is? Revenge?" The colonel sprang jerkily to his feet. "Do Jedi take revenge? How can you do this? How can you do "You are not the only one," Mace said evenly, "with unreliable subordinates." "Ah-" Geptun sank slowly back into his chair and lowered his head into his hands. A weak, sickly laugh shook his shoulders. "I understand. I didn't misjudge you. You misjudged jour people. This is all your mistake, not mine." "There will be plenty of guilt to go around. All that is important right now is the power to make it stop." "And you have this power?" "No," Mace said. "You do." "You think I haven't fried"? You think I don't have every person in this station working to deactivate those starfighters? Look at this-you see all this?" Geptun's voice was going shrill. A shadow-wave of a trembling hand swept the images on the walls and ceiling. "These are land- line sensors. Hard-wired. Want to see our remotes'?" He stabbed a control on the tabletop. All four walls and the ceiling fuzzed to eye-stinging white snow.

"See? Don't you see? All our signal-jamming controls are at the spaceport, too! Even if you wanted to order your pilots to stand down, you can't. We can't get through-it's out of our hands. We are helpless. Helpless." In the white light from the screens, Geptun looked pale and disheveled. His eyes were red and puffy. His lips were swollen as if he'd been chewing them. Black sweat stained his blouse from his armpits to his belt.

Mace said, "There is one more thing you can try." "Enlighten me." "Surrender." Geptun's laugh was bitter. "Oh, certainly. Why didn't I think of that?" He shook his head.

"Surrender to whom?" "To the Republic," Mace said. "To me." "To you} You're my prisoner. And you're wasting my time." His hand shook when he waved at the lieutenant. "Take them away." The big man shrugged. "You heard him-" the lieutenant began, but he finished the statement with a sudden yelp of surprise and pain when the lightsaber he held ignited in his hand, the blade stabbing downward to drive a smoking hole through his thigh.

His hands opened; the pistols clattered to the floor and the lightsaber flipped into Mace's palm. "You hold it like this," Mace said, sizzling blade poised a centimeter from the end of the big man's nose.

The two regulars behind them cursed and fumbled with their rifles. Nick spun to face them and brought up his arms as both his pistol yanked themselves through the air to smack into his hands. "Let's just not, okay?" The two militiamen, blinking and cross-eyed as they tried to focus on one muzzle apiece, settled on the better part of valor. Pale and grimacing, the lieutenant sagged against the holoviewer at his back, clutching his thigh.

"These are my terms," Mace said evenly. "The planetary militia will immediately cease all operations in the Lorshan Pass. You will turn over to me the starfighter control codes. And, as the ranking military official-and the ranking officer of the Confederacy-you will sign a formal surrender ceding Haruun Kal, and the Al'har system itself, to the Republic." "Colonel-" The lieutenant's growl was thin with pain. "Maybe you oughta think about it.

Y'know? Think about it. I mean, all the guys-we got families here-" Geptun clutched the edge of the table, livid. "If I don't?" Mace shrugged. "Then I won't save your city." "How am I supposed to trust that you will? That you even can?" "You know who I am." Geptun trembled, and not from fear. "This is extortion!" "No," Mace said. "It's war." The formal surrender had been drafted, witnessed, and signed right there in the Intel station.

"You know this has no legal standing," Geptun said as he affixed his signature and retinal print. "I sign this surrender only under duress-" "Surrender is always made under duress," Mace observed dryly. "That's why they call it surrender." Mace set the comm gear to automatically make a number of trans missions the instant signal- jamming abated enough that communications could resume. Many of the transmissions would be simple orders to the various battalions of militia to lay down their arms. More significant would be a HoloNet report to Coruscant with a copy of the surrender agreement, along with an emergency summons for a Republic task force. If the Republic could get here in force before the Confederacy did, their landing would be unopposed. By the time signal-jamming would end, he'd have control of the starfight-ers; even if the Separatists got here first, Mace would be in a position to make the Al'har system uncomfortably hot for them.

And if they tried to land, the spaceport controlled the planetary defenses as well.

Now all he had to do was control the spaceport.

They had the whole platoon plus the armored groundcar squad for escort through the chaos of Pelek Baw.

Geptun got them through the militia perimeter that stretched in a thick arc among the burning warehouses, then Mace stepped out of the groundcar. "Nick. You drive." He shooed away the rest of the militiamen. Geptun started to follow them. "Not you, Colonel. Get in the car." "Me?" The ride to the spaceport had given Geptun time to recover his composure; he looked almost his old self again. "You can't be serious! What do you expect me to do?" "You'll transmit the deactivation codes. To make sure nothing goes wrong." "Why should I have to do anything What will you two be doing?" Nick stared through the windshield at the spaceport gates. "Killing people." Geptun looked at him, blinking as though he were expecting a punchline.

Mace said, "Get in the car." "Really-I mean, please-I don't know what kind of man you think I am-" "I think," Mace said, "that you are a very brilliant man. I think that you have more courage than you have ever guessed. I think that you truly care about this city, and the people in it. I think your cynicism is a fraud." "What-what-really, this is astonishing-" "I think that if you were truly as corrupt and venal as you pretend," said Mace Windu, "you would be in the Senate." Geptun's blank gape hung on for one silent second, then gave way to an abrupt guffaw.

Shaking his head, still chuckling, he walked around to the other side of the groundcar. "Here, young man, shove over. I'll drive." "You will?" "You might have to shoot people, yes?" Nick looked at Mace; Mace shrugged, and Nick slid over to the passenger side. Geptun adjusted the pilot's seat to make himself comfortable behind the control yoke. "I suppose," he said with a vast theatrical sigh, "I am as ready as I will ever be." Mace ignited his lightsaber.

He lifted its blade, and stood for a moment, staring into its blaze as though he could read his future there.

Perhaps he could.

That killing flame might be the only future he had.

He let it drop to his side but held it alight, and walked toward the spaceport gates.

"Follow me." Geptun engaged the groundcar's drive system and let the armored vehicle roll along behind the Jedi Master's deliberate stride.

Turbolaser towers loomed to either side. From the city at his back came the shriek of fighting ships cutting the air, the hammer of weapons and the rolling booms of exploding buildings, but beyond the durasteel bars of the gate, all was silence and stillness.

He reached the gate, and looked across the bare landing field toward the control center.

Empty. Silent. Vast. The dayfloods threw stark white glare.

His blade flashed. Durasteel clanged on permacrete.

Mace walked into the spaceport.

The groundcar rolled in after him.

He had no idea what to expect here. He thought he was ready for anything. He was almost right.

One thing he didn't expect was the crackle of a helmet speaker from the ground-level hatch of the turbolaser tower to his left.

"General Windu! General Windu, is that you?" Three troopers crouched in the doorway.

Mace called, "Yes." "Permission to approach, sir!" He waved them over, and they came at a run. They snapped to attention in perfect file.

"With the general's permission-the sergeant sent us out to see if it was you, sir!" "And it is," Mace said. "Me." "They said your ship blew up." "Did they?" "Yes, sir! They told us you were dead!" Mace Windu said, "Not yet." Mace stared at the bleak durasteel of the blast door while the trooper captain filled him in.

The blast door was a full meter thick, and locked with internal bolts of neutronium. Its surface was smooth. Dull matte gray. From the outside, it was controlled by a code panel. The inside had a manual wheel. When the wheel was engaged, the code panel was useless.

The command bunker was more secure than most treasure vaults. Only the swiftness of their assault had allowed Mace, Depa, and the Akk Guards to capture it in the first place; the defenders had not had time to swing it shut.

The brightly lit corridor seemed unreal. A full platoon of heavy assault troopers crouched in a tight arc on the white tile around the blast door, bolting tripods into the floor and charging weapons. Four more platoons waited in reserve, two down either direction of the corridor.

Mace stood in front of the door. Geptun sat on a heavy repeater's fusion pack, white-knuckled hands clutching his armored datapad. Nick sat on the floor with his back against the wall beside the door, eyes closed. He might have been asleep.

The trooper captain was designated CC-8,'349. He told Mace that the regiment had had no communication from the bunker since the news that the general had been killed; that was shortly after Master Billaba had ordered them to use the spaceport's ships to draw the droid starfighters down upon the city. The rest of the clone troopers had been ordered to stand ready to repel a militia infantry assault.

Since then, there had been no communication from the bunker. No one had entered. No one had left.

Mace had a good idea how the inside of the bunker looked right now. Too good an idea.

A surge of dark power spread across the city like the shock-front of a fusion bomb.

Behind that door was ground zero.

"Makes you wonder," Nick said slowly, eyes still closed, "just what they're doing in there." Mace said, "They're waiting." "For what?" He looked down at the lightsaber in his hand. "To see if I come back." Nick seemed to chew this over. He opened his eyes and pulled himself to his feet. He shook his arms loose and hooked his thumbs over his gunbelts. "Then I guess we shouldn't disappoint them." Mace frowned at the slug pistols holstered on Nick's thighs. "You should borrow a blaster." "Fine with these." "Blasters are more accurate. More stopping power." Mace's voice was grim. "More shots." Nick drew his right hand gun, turning it over as though admiring it for the first time. "Thing about slugs is, they only go one way," he said lazily. "Blasters are all well and good, but I don't particularly care to eat my own shot. Slugs don't bounce." "Off a vibroshield they will." Nick shrugged. "Not off a lightsaber." Mace lowered his head. He had no answer.

The sick weight that had gathered in his chest for so long now threatened to crush him altogether.

"Captain Four-Nine," he said slowly. "No one comes out of there but us. Do you understand? No one." "General, we should go in first-" "No." "With the general's pardon: That's what we are for." "Your purpose is to fight. Not to die uselessly. Master Yoda knew better than to send troopers against a single enemy Force-user on Geonosis; in that bunker may be as many as seven." "Eight." Mace glared at Nick. Nick shrugged. "You know it's true." The Jedi Master set his jaw.

"Eight." He turned again to CC-8,'349. "I will go in first. Your men will enter on my command. Two platoons. Come in shooting: blast anything that moves. But this is not search and destroy.

You're there solely to cover Colonel Geptun. You will take all available measures to protect him, and to ensure that he completes his mission. His mission is the objective of this operation, understood? If he fails, nothing else matters." "Yes, sir. Understood, sir." "The rest of you will remain out here to hold the doorway. If you have to. And if you can." "Um, if I might interrupt-?" Geptun coughed delicately. "Has anyone considered just how we are going to get zR?" "Just like we do everything else," Nick said. "The hard way." "Pardon?" "Shaped charges," Mace told him. He turned to the trooper captain. "Proton grenades. Blow the door." "General-!" CC-8,'349 stiffened to attention. "With the general's pardon, sir, Commander Seven-One's still in there! With more than twenty men. And there are prisoners to consider, sir.

Including civilians. If we use proton grenades, the casualties-" "There is no one in that room except the dead," Mace said heavily. "And the people who killed them." He nodded to Nick. "Cover my back from the doorway." The young Korun drew Chalk's pistol from his left holster. He held both guns low and loose, and nodded back.

"Colonel Geptun." The plump little Balawai pushed himself to his feet. He clamped the armored datapad under one arm but still held it with both white-knuckled hands. One of his kneecaps jumped and shuddered, but his voice was light and steady as ever. "Ready when you are, Master Jedi." "I can't protect you in there." "Lovely." "You won't be using the console. The transceiver unit itself is in a chamber below the bunker.

I will provide access. Stay out here until I call for the troopers." "Certainly. I am in no, ah, hurry, if you take my meaning. I have never been anything remotely resembling a hero." "People," Mace said with tragic conviction, "change." He ignited his blade. He held it with both hands.

"May the Force be with us." He looked at CC-8,'349.

"All right, Captain. Blow the door." THE HARD WAY G

reasy smoke curled from the shattered blast door. It reeked of blood and flesh and human waste.

The smell of death.

Mace stood next to the door, waiting for the smoke to thin.

The command bunker was dark as a cave. The only light was the white shaft that spilled in through the opening that used to be the door. The interior materialized as though it slowly drew substance from the haze itself.

Bodies were everywhere.

Piled along the walls. Draped over the banks of monitor consoles. Facedown on the floor in black pools.

Some wore combat armor. Some wore militia khakis. Some wore no uniform at all.

Some were missing pieces.

Mace's blade hissed in the smoke as he went inside.

As a weapon, a lightsaber was uniquely tidy. Even, in a sense, merciful. Its powerful cascade of energy instantly seared and cauterized any wound it inflicted. The wounds rarely bled at all. It was a clean weapon.

A vibroshield was not.

STAR WARS: SHATTERPOIN1 The floor in the command bunker was treacherously slippery.

Mace trod with care. Behind him, Nick slipped through the doorway and put his back to the wall.

All was silence and death. A whole different world from the madness outside. Inside was a darker madness.

So dark he might as well be blind.

"Depa," he said softly. "Kar. Come out. I know you're watching? me.

His answer was a low, silky predator's growl that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

We don't have to be enemies.

Mace brought up his blade. He moved cautiously around the ruins of the monitor bank closest to the doorway.

Aren't we on the same side? We've won the planet for you, haven't we?

Mace reached into the Force, feeling for the emptiness below that would contain the transceiver. With each step, he worked his feet down, seeking solid footing on the floor before taking the next.

Do you really want to fight us? We are kin, you and I.

We are your own people.

"You were never my people." Mace spoke without emotion. "A man like you will always be my enemy, no matter whose side you're on. And I will always fight you." Why do they name you a Master? You have mastered only futility. You cannot possibly win.

"I don't have to win," Mace said. "All I have to do is fight." A low snarl was the only warning he got.

Nick's guns roared flame at a hurtling dark shape that leaped from nowhere. Sparks clanged in the gloom as Mace whirled instinctively and slashed at the shape and it vanished in a dive that carried it over the console bank. Before he'd even seen what it was.

He'd never felt it coming.

Dark power swirled around him.

He let his blade shrink away and crouched between two console banks, his heart hammering. "Nick!" he called. "Did you get him?" "Don't think so." Nick's voice came out thin and tight. "Sounded like he took both on the shields. You?" Mace smelled smoke: charred flesh. "Perhaps. A piece of him, any, way.

"See where he came from?" "No. I think-" Mace's breath hissed through his teeth. "I thin they're hiding among the bodies. Stay ready." "You better believe it." The low snarling growl became mocking. Your Force can't help yo here. Here there is only pelekotan. And we are only pelekotani dream.

Mace crept his way silently along the console bank.

You didn't feel me coming at you. You can't.

"That wasn't you," Mace said, low.

But it was. One-seventh of me.

Your pardon: one-eighth.

He could feel the transceiver chamber now: two meters away o the far side of this console bank. Its ceiling began a meter and a ha below the floor.

You have lost her. Lost her to pelekotan. Lost her to pelekotan's drean a world free from Balawai.

Mace muttered, "We are all Balawai here." He triggered his blade just long enough to stab into the leg well c the console under which he crouched, and carve an arch out of? back just large enough to crawl through. He pulled the cutaway piec free and laid it flat.

On the far side lay a knot of dead clones. Four. He had to crav over them.

Someone had taken off their helmets. Their eyes were open.

Jango Fett's dead face stared at him four times over.

Dead eyes looked into him and saw nothing but his guilt.

He kept moving.

The spot he needed was just ahead. Mace finally tore his attentio away from the dead clones, and froze.

Someone had been carving the floor there already. Blackene hunks of the command bunker's armor plating lay strewn around human-sized pit already nearly a meter deep. Beside them, a sl? form in tattered brown robes lay crumpled on the floor.

Her lightsaber was still in her hand.

For one giddy instant, his heart sang: she had anticipated him. She hadn't fallen to the dark-it had been an act, all an act't't She had been cutting through the floor to help him- But it was only one instant. He knew better.

Of course she had anticipated him: she knew all there was to know about his style. She'd known exactly what his target had to be, and she hadn't been cutting into the chamber below in order to help activate the transceiver.

She'd been going there to destroy it.

Looked like the proton grenade blast had caught her just in time. She didn't seem to be breathing. In the blinding swirl of dark power that filled the bunker, he could not feel if she still lived.

You have gone very quiet, doshalo. Do you think silence can save you? Do you think that because you cannot feel me, the reverse is also true?

Too much fatigue; too much pain. He had no room left in his heart for more.

He would grieve later. Now, looking at her corpse, he felt only a vague, melancholy relief that he hadn't had to kill her himself.

Do you think there is anything about you I don't know?

"I think," Mace said, "that if you were all you claim, I'd already be dead." He pushed himself into a forward roll that brought him up to a crouch, and looked down into the hole. She'd done most of his work for him already. He could cut through with a single stroke.

You are not yet my kill.

"No? Whose kill am I, then?" The answer to his question was a lightsaber's emitter jammed against his belly.

Mace had time to think blankly: Oh. Not dead. Faking.

"Depa-?" She screamed as she triggered her blade. And kept screaming as its green fire chewed a tunnel through Mace's guts and speared out his back. His hand seized hers instinctively, locking her blade against his body so that she could not kill him by slashing it free. His own blade ignited- But he could not strike her. Even now. Not here, so close he could kiss her instead; not while her scream spiraled up into a shriek; not while he had to look into her wide staring eyes and see no hate or rage but only stark agony.

He was going to have to do this the hard way.

He struck downward into the pit beside them, his blade slicing out a lopsided ellipse of armor plate that dropped into darkness below and clanged to an unseen floor.

"Geptunf he roared. "NOW Flashes of battle: — shadows fleeing the bunker as swarms of screaming electric blue blaster bolts rebounding off walls shoot them to rags- a flood of troopers spreading into a wave through the doorway, weapons gouting lightning-colored energy, Geptun in the middle of them, head down and running, datapad cradled like a baby in his arms- a buzzing shield of silver flame that sliced through a blaster rifle so that it exploded and took with it the trooper's hands- These images burned in Mace's brain as he fought for his life against the woman who should have been his daughter.

He brought his blade back up from the pit and turned his wrist on the forehand so that his recovery stroke took her in the temple with his lightsaber's butt. Her fingers slipped off the blade's activation plate and it shrank back down through his body. She howled and punched his eyesocket with her free hand, but Mace got his foot wedged between them and he shoved her away with a powerful thrust.

At the same instant both of them backflipped into the air, landing on their feet poised in perfect mirror images, their blades whipping in identically curving slashes almost too fast to see.

Blaster bolts howled around them. The air crackled with streaks and splatters of energy.

Their blades flickered and whipped and no bolt touched their flesh.

Their eyes never left each other's.

Something had torn in his guts when he did the backflip. Smoke trickled upward from the hole in his belly. He could smell it, but he felt no pain. Not yet. His blade whirred through the air.

Hers whirred faster. She advanced.

The slashes never stopped. They would never stop. They flowed one into the next with liquid precision.

This constant near-invisible weave of lethal energy is the ready-stance of Vaapad.

"Depa," Mace said desperately. "I don't want to fight you. Depa, please-" She sprang at him, screaming without words; he couldn't know if she'd heard him. He couldn't know if language still had meaning for her.

Then she was on him. His whole world turned to green fire.

Twenty-four troopers entered the bunker in a wedge around Colonel Geptun. Nick Rostu kept his back against the wall while he watched them die.

Akk Guards leaped over and past them, and with every leap another clone fell. The clones never stopped, never faltered, firing blaster carbines from the hip, forcing their way forward over the bodies of their comrades.

And it wasn't only clones who died.

The Force nudged Nick, and he swung a pistol and fired without thinking. A leaping Akk Guard whirled and the slug banged sparks off his shield, but in the instant his attention was diverted he fell against the muzzle of a trooper's DC-15 and blue energy exploded out his back.

This Akk Guard had been a man Nick knew, as he knew them all. This one's name had been Prouk. He'd liked to gamble, and he once lost sixty credits to Nick on a bet, and he'd paid it.

Another nudge from the Force and another shot took out the knee of an Akk Guard. He crumpled on top of a dying trooper, who still had enough life left in him to hold down the trigger of his carbine and blow the akk to rags.

This was the Guard whose nose Mace had broken. His name was Thaffal.

Nick was waiting for his next shot when a massive shadow rose up right in front of him; intent on the Force, Nick hadn't seen him coming. He said, "Whoops." This one's name was lolu. He had saved Nick's life during a fire-fight, once. A long time ago.

"Hello, Nick," lolu said, and drove his shield's sizzling edge toward Nick's neck.

Depa's blade was everywhere.

Mace backpedaled, parrying frantically, absorbing the shock of her attacks with bent arms and a two-handed grip. He was taller than she, with more reach and weight, and vastly more muscle in his upper body, but she drove him backward as though he were a child. Green flame struck through his guard, and only a frantic jerk of his head turned what would have been a brain-burning thrust into a line of char along his cheekbone.

Still he did not strike back.

"I will not kill you," he said. "Death is not the answer to your pain." Her reply was a scream louder and more savage and an onslaught to match. She broke through his guard again and scorched his wrist. Another stroke burned a slice through his pants leg just above the knee.

Power roared around her, a rising storm of darkness.

Mace got it now: as each Akk Guard died, his share of pelekotan backflowed through the bonds Vaster had forged among them.

She was getting stronger.

And with each stroke of her blade, he could feel himself slipping into the shadows. He had to. She was too strong, too fast, too everything. The only way he could survive was to give more of himself to Vaapad. To give all of himself.

To sink into pelekotaris dream.

He felt it: he had reached his own shatterpoint. And he was breaking.

The vibroshield flashed toward his neck.

Nick's knees buckled and he bent backward like a drawn bow. lolu's fist grazed Nick's nose as the horizontal vibroshield passed over the young Korun's upturned face and bit into the wall so smoothly that the Akk Guard's knuckles hit as well; the unexpected shock loosened his grip on the vibroshield's activator and its hum died, leaving it stuck fast in the wall.

Before lolu could pull it back out, Nick flipped his pistol's muzzle up against the Akk Guard's extended elbow.

The slug didn't quite blow his arm off. lolu swayed, stunned.

Chalk's gun in Nick's other hand came up under lolu's chin. "Never liked you anyway," Nick said, and pulled the trigger.

The corpse fell against him. Its shattered arm slipped free of the shield's retaining straps.

Nick pushed himself sideways out from under, looking for another target, and the dead Guard slid down the wall.

Geptun was nowhere to be seen. He was either dead or down with the transceiver. Either way, there was nothing left to do but fight.

A knot of clone troopers stood back-to-back, firing desperately at one lone Akk Guard who leaped and spun and slaughtered with demonic precision.

No: not an Akk Guard.

It was Kar Vaster.

Nick leveled Chalk's gun. "This is for her, scum-packer," he muttered. "Never liked you either." But her pistol was too heavy for him to hold steady. His own seemed to have gained a dozen kilos as well. "What the frag-?" His knees turned to cloth.

He looked over at lolu's corpse. The other shield, one that still hung silent along his dead arm, was stained bright red. Dripping.

Nick said, "Oh." He looked down. A huge diagonal gash opened his tunic across his abdomen, and his legs were soaked with blood. He sagged back against the wall.

"Oh," he said again. "Oh, nuts." And, in the end, he was just too tired. Too old.

Too wounded.

Through the trace of Force connection he had with Nick, Mace felt the young Korun collapse. Something broke inside his head, and all his own wounds crashed upon him.

Every cut and bruise, every cracked bone and sprained joint, the man-bite on his shoulder and the hole through his guts: all of them blossomed into silent screams.

His lightsaber went heavy, and his arms went slow. She burned a stripe across his chest, and he staggered.

His fighting spirit wasn't destroyed. It wasn't even far away. He could feel where it had gone.

He could reach out and touch it.

It was waiting for him in the dark.

Lorz Geptun quivered uncontrollably. Crouched in the cramped chamber that was filled with the refresher-sized tranceiver, he tried not to listen to the steady diminuendo of the blaster fire above. Each gun that fell silent was one less man up there to protect his life.

His hands trembled so badly he could barely punch the keys on the codelock that sealed his datapad's armored shell. When he finally got it open, he had to fumble in the inky shadows for the linkport on the transceiver. His shaking hands made inserting his pad's datalink resemble threading a needle with his feet, but he got it done.

With a gasp of triumph, he keyed the droid starfighter recall sequence.

Nothing happened.

A moment later, his datapad's screen announced: ECM FAULT. UNABLE TO EXECUTE. ECM FAULT. ECM: Electronic Counter- Measure. The signal-jamming was still on.

In the Force, Mace felt Geptun's despair. It felt like a gift.

Another man might even have smiled.

He took one last look at the darkness that called to him- Darkness within mirroring darkness without- And turned away.

He let his blade vanish. His arms dropped to his sides.

Depa moved in for the kill.

Mace backed away.

She leaped for him, slashing, and he slipped aside. She pressed her attack and he retreated, over bodies and through blaster-riddled wreckage of console banks, until he came hard up against a console that still had power: indicator lights flashed like droid eyes in the gloom.

The blade of green fire whirled up, poised, and struck.

He let himself collapse.

He fell to the floor at her feet, and instead of cleaving his skull, her blade slashed the console behind him in half. Cables spat blue sparks across the burned gap.

This was the console that controlled the spaceport's signal-jamming equipment.

Down in the transceiver chamber, Geptun stared at his datapad's screen with astonished reverence, conscious of having been unexpectedly granted undeserved grace.

It read: COMMAND EXECUTED.

In the skies over Pelek Baw, as the snowcap on Grandfather's Shoulder kindled with the first red rays of dawn, droid starfighters disengaged from clone-piloted ships and streaked back into the depths of space.

In the command bunker, the swirl of dark power crested, paused, and began to recede.

Mace lay on the floor. He didn't think he could get up. Depa stared down at him, her face lit jungle-green by the glow of her blade, and a single needle of light seemed to pierce the dark madness in her eyes. "Oh, Mace." Her voice was a moan of astonished pain. Her blade vanished, and her arms fell limp and helpless to her sides. "Mace, I'm sorry-I'm so sorry." He managed to lift a hand to reach up to her. "Depa-" "Mace, I'm sorry," she repeated, and brought her lightsaber up to put its emitter to her own temple. "We shouldn't have come." "Depa, no!" Mace found he did have the strength to rise, to stand, even to leap for her, but he was exhausted, and wounded, and far, far too slow. She squeezed the activator plate.

A single sharp report-like a handclap-rang out behind him, and a spark flew from the metal of her blade as it was smacked spinning from her hand.

It twisted lazily through the air and clattered among the wreckage. She blinked dizzily, as though she couldn't quite understand why she was still alive, then crumpled to the floor. Mace turned toward where the sound had come from. Sitting next to the corpse of a dead Akk Guard, his back propped against the wall, one hand pressed to his chest to hold closed a horrible wound, Nick Rostu grinned past the smoking barrel of the pistol in his other hand.

"Told you." "Nick-" "Told you I can shoot." he said. His fingers opened and the gun fell to the floor; his hand dropped on top of it and his eyes drifted shut.

"Nick, I-" The young Korun was beyond hearing. Mace said softly, "Thank you." He swayed. He had to put out a hand to the wrecked comm console to steady himself.

The bunker had once again gone quiet and dark and full of death. Quiet except for a low growl.

The growl came from a black shape that rose like corpse-fungus from among the bodies.

So, doshalo. Here we are. For the last time.

"Perhaps." The shape smoked with power. More power than Mace had ever felt.

And he was so tired. So hurt. The lightsaber wound in his belly radiated pain that scraped away his strength.

The shadow beckoned. Come on, then: jungle rules.

"On the contrary," Mace said slowly. "Jedi rules." What are Jedi rules'?

"You don't need to know," Mace told him. "You're not a Jedi." Vibroshields whined to life. I am waiting for you, Jedi of the Windu.

Mace extended a hand, and his lightsaber found it.

He stood, waiting.

"You fear to attack me.

"Jedi do not fear," Mace said. "And we do not attack. As long as you stand in peace, so do I. You have just learned two of the Jedi rules. For what little good they will do you. You haven't been paying very close attention, Kar. And it's too late to start now. It's over." Nothing is over! NOTHING. Not while we both live.

"This is another Jedi rule." Mace took a couple of steps to one side, to find a space of floor where he didn't have to fear tripping over a body. "If you fight a Jedi, you've already lost." The dark shape came closer. Fine words from a man I've beaten before.

"The starfighters have been ordered off. The city will stand. They've surrendered to the Republic. We have no reason to fight." Men like us are our own reason.

Mace shook his head. "This isn't a big dog thing. If I must, I will hurt you. Badly." You can't bluff me.

"No, but I can kill you. Though I would rather not." More Jedi rules?

Mace sagged. "Do you have a move to make? I'm too tired for this." Sleep when you're dead, Vaster snarled, and leaped.

Ultrachrome flashed. Mace could have met him, blade to shields, but instead he slipped aside.

He had no intention of fighting this man. Not here and now. Not anywhere. Not ever.

Vastor was younger, stronger, faster, and immensely more powerful, and he wielded weapons that could not be harmed by the Jedi blade. Mace couldn't win such a battle on his best day, and this day was far from his best: he was exhausted, badly wounded, and heartsick.

But the fact that his lightsaber couldn't hurt those shields didn't make them invulnerable.

As Vastor gathered himself to spring again, Mace reached into the Force. The vibroshield stuck into the wall above Nick's head squealed against the bunker's armor as it came to life and pulled itself free and streaked like a missile toward Vastor's back.

Vastor's incredible reflexes whirled him, and those same reflexes snapped his shields in front of his chest in plenty of time to block- But they didn't actually block anything.

There was a reason why, when Vastor's shields met to make that metallic howl, he always brought them together back-to-back, instead of edge-to-edge.

The flying shield's vibrating edge sheared through both Vastor's shields, through both his wrists, and buried itself in the bone of his chest, stopping less than a centimeter short of his heart.

Vastor blinked astonishment at Mace as though the Jedi Master had betrayed him.

Mace said, "You were warned." Vastor's head shook weakly, suddenly palsied. He dropped to his knees. You've killed me.

He sounded like he couldn't make himself believe it.

"No," Mace said. "That's another of the Jedi rules. Killing you is not the answer for your crimes. You're going back to Coruscant. You're going to stand trial." Vaster swayed. His gaze went blank and blind.

"Kar Vaster," said Mace Windu, "you are under arrest." Vaster pitched forward. Mace caught him and turned him face-up before lowering the unconscious lor pelek to the floor.

Then he pulled himself back to his feet, leaning on the console.

His vision grayed and lost focus; for a moment he wasn't sure where he was. This might have been Palpatine's office. Or the interrogation room at the Ministry of Justice. The Intel station, or the dead room at the Lorshan Pass.

Perhaps even the Jedi Temple. but the Jedi Temple wouldn't ever smell like this.

Would it?

"Master Windu?" He remembered the voice, and it brought him back to the command bunker.

"Is it over?" Geptun called tentatively from the transceiver chamber. He sounded very old, and more than a little lost. "Can I come out now?" Mace looked down at Kar Vastor, and the spreading pool of blood in which he lay. He looked at the scattered corpses of clone troopers and militia techs. He looked at Nick Rostu, crumpled against the wall.

"Master Windu?" Geptun's head appeared slowly over the rim of the hole in the floor. "Did we win?" Mace looked at the sad, shrunken form of Depa Billaba, and thought about his victory conditions.

"I seem to be," Mace Windu said slowly, "the last one standing." It was the only answer he had.

AFTERWORD THE JEDI" S WAR FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU: I still dream of Geonosis.

But my dreams are different, now.

A Republic task force arrived to take possession of Haruun Kal and the Al'har system within forty-eight standard hours of my arrest of Kar Vaster; it seems they had already been dispatched to answer a distress call from the acting commander of the Halieck.

Their landing was unopposed.

The Republic will not occupy Haruun Kal; acting under my authority as General of the Grand Army of the Republic, I redesignated the Korunnal Highland. It is no longer enemy territory, and Haruun Kal is no longer officially a war zone. On my recommendation, the Senate has declared the combat operations on Haruun Kal to be a police action.

Because I have decided to treat the Summertime War as a law enforcement problem.

Which it would have always been, had the financial interests behind the thyssel bark trade not been able to buy off certain Senators and Judicial sector coordinators.

We are in the process of disarming the jungle prospectors and the remaining bands of Korunnai guerrillas. It's going surprisingly well; the jups are terrified of Republic soldiers, and the Korunnai bands are mostly exhausted and sick. As they come to understand that they will not be mistreated, many simply surrender altogether. All charges of atrocities are being investigated. If those responsible can be identified, they will be tried, and they will be punished.

The planetary militia remains, though at greatly reduced strength. The militia regulars will now become what they should always have been.

Keepers of the peace. Not soldiers.

Many of them have volunteered to be inducted into the Republic Army.

Including, unexpectedly, Colonel Geptun.

He has not been charged with any crime. The vast bulk of the atrocities committed against the Korunnai were done by jungle prospectors, not the militia. Even his threat of a massacre at the Lorshan Pass turns out to have been a bluff. He never ordered any such thing; in fact, the militia's written rules of engagement specifically prohibit the targeting of civilians.

Not only have I recommended he be accepted into the Grand Army of the Republic, I have already written out his transfer to Republic Intelligence.

We will need him.

Nick-I should say, Major Rostu-continues to convalesce in a medical center here on Coruscant. I do not know if I can keep my promise of a job teaching unconventional warfare, but I have no doubt we can find something for him. I have submitted a recommendation to the Senate that his brevet rank be confirmed.

And that he be awarded the Medal of Valor for conspicuous gallantry under fire, and actions above and beyond the call of duty.

I have also assigned to Chalk a posthumous commission. Her real name, I have learned only now, was Liane Trevval, and that name will appear in the Senate record. I gave her the commission to render her eligible for the same medal.

I have no other way to express my respect for who she was.

Her great akk, Galthra, has vanished. If an akk's Force-bonded part ner dies, it is customary to put the beast down, for it is not uncommon for akks who have lost their person to go insane, and vicious.

Galthra went into the jungle. I can only hope she stays there.

Pelek Baw will be rebuilt. There is too much money in the thyssel trade for its epicenter to lie in ruins for long. The casualties- Are recorded elsewhere. It is a staggering number.

No one on Haruun Kal will ever forget that night.

Kar Vastor also continues to recover from his wounds. His hands were saved, and he is under detention here in the Jedi Temple, where his power cannot sway his jailers.

He will not be immediately tried for the murder of Terrel Nakay; that will only be filed against him in the event of his acquittal on his initial charge. For the trial of Kar Vastor, we have revived a category of crime under which no one has been prosecuted in four thousand years: since the days of the Sith Wars.

Kar Vastor has been charged with crimes against civilization.

And Depa- Depa will face the same charge.

Someday.

If she's ever declared competent to stand trial.

After reading my report on Haruun Kal, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine-in his characteristically warm and compassionate way-took time from his more pressing duties to come to the Temple and look in on Depa personally.

He was accompanied by Yoda and myself; the three of us stood alone in a darkened observation room, watching through a holoviewer as three Jedi healers attended to poor Depa.

She hung suspended in a bacta tank. Her eyes were open-submerged in bacta one has no need to blink-and they stared fixedly through the transparisteel at something only she could see.

Depa has not spoken-has not moved-since her collapse. The greatest Jedi healers of the Temple can find nothing organically wrong with her. Bacta has cured her physical wounds; it cannot touch the rest.

When the healers touch her through the Force, all they find is darkness. Vast and featureless.

She is lost in infinite night.

The Supreme Chancellor watched only for a moment or two before he sighed and shook his head sadly. "Still no progress, I take it?" Yoda watched me gravely while I struggled to find words to answer. Finally he sighed and took pity on me.

"To end her life, she tried," he said. "Most tragic this is: to have sunk so deeply into despair that she can no longer see light. Yet we must not follow her there; hold on to hope, we must.

Recover she may. Someday." Though perhaps I should not have admitted it, the truth pushed its way out of me. "I would almost have preferred to lose the planet, if I could have saved Depa." "And do you know what caused her breakdown?" Palpatine pressed his hand against the holoviewer, as though he could reach through it and stroke her hair. "I recall that learning this was one of the stated purposes of your mission to Haruun Kal, and yet your report offers no definite conclusion." Slowly, I admitted, "Yes. I do know." "And?" "It's difficult to explain. Especially to a non-Jedi." "Does it have anything to do with that scar on her forehead? Where her-what did you call it?" "The Greater Mark of Illumination." "Yes. Where her Mark of Illumination once was. I recognize that this is painful for you, Master Windu, but please. The Jedi are vital to the survival of the Republic, and Master Billaba is not the only Jedi we have lost to the darkness. Anything we can learn about what might cause one to fall is incredibly important." I nodded. "But I cannot offer a specific answer." "Well, the scar, then. Was she tortured?" "I do not know. Possibly. It is also possible that the wound was self-inflicted. We may never know." "It is a pity," Palpatine murmured, "that we cannot ask her." Some few seconds passed before I was able to respond. "I can only speculate in general terms, based upon what she told me, and upon my own experiences." Palpatine's eyebrows twitched upward. "Your own?" I could not meet his gaze; when I lowered my head, I found Yoda staring up at me. His wise wrinkled face was filled with ancient compassion. "Fall you did not," he said softly. "From this, strength you can take." I nodded, and found myself once again able to face the Supreme Chancellor. "It's war," I said. "Not just that war, but war itself. When every choice you make means death. When saving these innocents means that those innocents must die. I'm not sure that any Jedi can survive such choices for long." Palpatine looked from Yoda to me, his face a mask of compassionate concern. "Who would have thought that fighting a war could have such a terrible effect on a Jedi? Even when we win," he murmured. "Who would ever have thought such a thing?" "Yes," I could only agree. "Who would have thought it, indeed?" "Wonder, one must," Yoda said slowly, "if that might be the most important question of all." There followed a long, uncomfortable silence, which Palpatine finally broke. "Ah, sadly, questions of philosophy must wait for peacetime. We must focus on winning this war." "That's what Depa did," I said. "And look what it did to her." "Ah, but such a thing could never happen to-say, for example-you," Palpatine said warmly. His lips wore an enigmatic smile. "Could it?" I didn't tell him that it could. That it nearly had.

I think about that a lot, these days. I think about Depa. About everything she said to me.

And did to me.

I think about the jungle.

She was right about so many things.

She was right about her Jedi of the Future. To win this war against the Separatists, we must abandon the very thing that makes us Jedi. Yes, we won on Haruun Kal-because our enemy broke under the club of KarVastor's monstrous ruthlessness.

Jedi are keepers of the peace. We are not soldiers.

If we become soldiers, we will be Jedi no more. f Yet I do not despair.

She was wrong about some things, too.

You see, she got lost fighting someone else's war. She was fighting: the wrong enemy. | The Separatists are not the true enemies of the Jedi. They are ene- Jj mies of the Republic.

It is the Republic which will stand or fall in the I battles of the Clone War. f Even the reborn Sith are not our enemy. Not really. f Our enemy is power mistaken for justice.

Our enemy is the desperation that justifies atrocity.

The Jedi's true enemy is the jungle, Our enemy is the darkness itself: the strangling cloud of fear and despair and anguish that this war brings with it. That is poisoning our galaxy. This is why my dreams of Geonosis are different now.

In my dreams, I still do everything right.

But I do in my dreams exactly what I did in that arena.

If the prophecies are true-if Anakin Skywalker is truly the Chosen One, who will bring balance to the Force-then he is the most important being alive today. And he is alive today because my Jedi instincts were working just fine.

Because my mistake on Geonosis wasn't a mistake at all.

If I had done as Depa said I should have-if I had won the Clone War with a baradium bomb on Geonosis-I would have lost the real war. The Jedi's war.

Anakin Skywalker may be the shatterpoint of our war against the jungle.

If he is-if Anakin is the being born to win that war-it does not matter if every other Jedi in the galaxy dies.

As long as Anakin lives, we have hope. No matter how dark it gets, or how lost our cause may seem.

He is our new hope for a Jedi future.

May the Force be with us all.