'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 z®?" '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.

 

 

The End