"Looks like we pulled it off," Nick said, though he seemed to take little satisfaction from success. "We saved 'em. Wish they could return the favor." We had barely begun cutting when we had both felt Vastor's forces drawing tight around us: a living noose. Nick had commented that my little deception hadn't fooled him for long.
I didn't answer. I had a feeling that in this particular game of dejarik, Kar was not my true opponent.
One of the gunships circled close overhead: offering itself as bait, to see if hidden guns would open fire when it came within range. And in the Force, I could feel the gunners inside it targeting Nick and me with laser cannons; only our proximity to the Balawai held them back.
As Nick would say: it was time to saddle up.
But before we left, I crouched beside the father of Urno and Nykl. "I want you to take a message to Colonel Geptun." He looked dazed, and his words slurred with exhaustion. "Geptun? The security chief in Pelek Baw? How am I supposed to get in to see him?" "He'll debrief you personally." "He will?" "Tell him the Jedi Master has handled his Jedi problem. Tell him that if he disarms his irregulars and withdraws the militia from the highland, this war is over. He has my word on it." The man goggled at me as though antlers had suddenly sprouted from my forehead-and his astonishment was no greater than Nick's.
"One more thing: remind him that in less than a week I've solved a problem he couldn't manage in four months." I rose, and stood over him so that my shadow fell across his face.
"Tell him that if he does not do as I suggest, he'll be the problem. And I will solve him." 't't led Nick off into the jungle without waiting for a reply.
I did stop for a moment, though, and looked back through the trees, to where the boys' father held them in his arms as they waited for the descending gunship.
To where Keela held Pell, both of their heads lowered against the leaf-whirl thrown up by the ship's turbojets.
I don't expect to be forgiven. I don't even hope for it. I only hope that someday, these children may be able to look at a Jedi without hatred in their hearts.
That's the only reward I want.
Night was falling, and the sun slanted low through the canyon mouth. Navigating was easy: they loped through the thickening twilight, heading directly toward where the Force showed Mace maximum threat.
"So, you've handled the militia's Jedi problem, have you?" Nick muttered as they jogged under the trees. "That'll come as a surprise to Kar and Depa, I'm guessing." "I'm not interested in Kar," Mace said. "I'm only interested in Depa. Where's the nearest subspace comm?" Nick shrugged. "The Lorshan Pass caverns. That's our base-it's only a couple of days away, if we can ever lose the fraggin' gunships. That's where we're heading anyway. Why?" "Less than a day after you get me subspace comm, Depa and I will be leaving this planet. I am willing to waste no more time. I need subspace to call for extraction." "And me, right? You wouldn't leave your whole staff behind, would V
you?
"You have seen what my word is worth." "You think maybe you could, like, send me out first? Because, y'know, I don't want to be anywhere in this whole sector when Kar finds out she's leaving." "Leave Vaster to me." "And, uh, Master General, sir? Have you considered what you're gonna do if she doesn't want to go?" "It's not up to her." "She could have gotten out of here weeks ago, if she wanted. How are you gonna make her go?" Mace said, "I have a hostage." "A what? Are you allowed to do that? I mean, do Jedi take hostages?" "There is one hostage a Jedi may lawfully take. I hope it won't come to that." "Have you considered that she might not give a bucket of tusker poop about this hostage?" "I have," Mace said. His voice was cold, but the thought made a hot knife twist in his belly.
Nick stopped in his tracks. He said weakly, "Have you considered that neither of us might live that long?" He said this because of the twelve snarling akk dogs who had materialized around them as though the jungle had birthed them from the twilight.
Fury chuffed into the Force like the steam from their nostrils. Moving out of the gloom- haunted trees came all six of the Akk Guards. They wore their vibroshields pushed up over their biceps, freeing their hands for the assault rifles and grenade launchers they carried.
Weapons for hunters stalking human prey.
All six wore the human equivalent of the akks' snarls.
None of them spoke.
It was possible, at that moment, that none of them remembered how.
The Force hummed with anger, as though every one of them resonated on a single harmonic.
Mace felt, then, the power of the Force-bonds that linked them-but not to each other. Not one of the Akk Guards had a link with a dog like the one Chalk had had with Galthra.
All eighteen of them, dogs and men alike, were Force-bonded not with each other, but each with one single other, as though they were spokes on a wheel of which he was the hub.
The anger Mace felt was Kar's.
He recognized its distinctive flavor.
He said, "I think Kar might be a little upset about those prisoners after all." Nick stood with his back against Mace's: where once Depa would have been.
Where Depa should have been.
Where, in any sane universe, she would be right now.
Mace heard the familiar snap of an igniting blade and turned to Nick. "Give me that." The young Korun's eyes flared green with the blade's glow. "What am I supposed to fight with, then? My rapierlike wit?" Which would do him as much good as a lightsaber against twelve akk dogs, but Mace didn't tell him that. "You won't be fighting." "Says you." Instead of arguing, Mace reached over the blade and finger-snapped the end of his nose as though flicking away a fly.
Nick blinked, flinching, blurting a reflexive obscenity, and by the time he remembered that he'd had a lightsaber in his hand, the lightsaber was in Mace's.
"Vastor is a predator, not a HoloNet villain: they're not holding us here so that he can gloat.
If he planned to kill us, we'd already be dead." "So why are they holding us here?" A massive shadow approached through the trees: low and huge, with side-bent legs and immense splay-clawed feet.
Nick breathed, "Oh, I get it. He's bringing Depa." HOSTAGE I
he immense shadow crashed closer, its walk a symphony of splintering trees.
It was an ankkox.
A massive armored saurian, the ankkox was the largest land animal of Haruun Kal.
Ankkoxes were twice the size of grassers-more than half again the mass of a full-grown bantha-but built low and wide, with a broad dorsal shell like an oval soup plate turned upside down. The dorsal shell of this one was nearly three meters wide, and well over four meters long.
A drover's chair was bolted to the top of the ankkox's crown shell, a convex disc of armor that capped the beast's head; when an ankkox retracted its head and legs, its crown shell and all six knee shells fit into gaps in its armor as snugly as air locks, enabling the ankkox to survive washes of volcanic gas that it couldn't outrun.
This drover did not sit, but stood wide-legged on the crown armor behind the chair, brandishing a long pole that ended in a sharp-looking hook, to use as a goad in directing the ankkox's path. Two teardrop-shaped shields of ultrachrome were pushed up onto his biceps.
Kar Vaster.
He moved only to direct the ankkox. His face held no expression. He did not even look at Mace and Nick.
The air around him shimmered with his rage.
Smaller trees the ankkox shouldered aside; underbrush it simply crushed beneath its speeder-sized feet. To get the ankkox through tree gaps too small to pass its huge shell where the trees were too large to overbear, Vaster would reach out with his goad, indicating specific points on their trunks-which would be struck by some whirring object, invisibly fast, that impacted with enough power to shatter the trunks and let it pass: the creature's tail mace.
The only part of the ankkox's body that was not armored was its extensile, muscular, surprisingly flexible tail. The tail was tipped with a thick round ball of armor, and an adult ankkox could snap i
ts tail faster than the human eye could see, using that mace to accurately strike targets up to eight meters away with enough power to stun an akk dog or shatter a small tree.
There was a time, before the reopening of Haruun Kal to the civilized galaxy, when a mace taken from a juvenile ankkox was the traditional weapon of Korun herders: dangerous to acquire. Difficult to use. Deadly in effect.
On the central bulge of this ankkox's dorsal shell had been built a howdah: a small curtained cabin framed with lammas wood, two meters by three, barely larger than the long padded chaise within. The draped canopy stood slightly higher than Mace was tall, bounded by a polished rail perhaps a meter above the shell. The curtains, not to mention the fine-worked wood itself, were probably spoils looted from some Balawai's home. Multiple layers of gauzy lace, the curtains were translucent as smoke.
With the sunset behind, Mace could see her silhouette.
The ankkox crunched to a ponderous stop, settling onto its ventral shell with a long hiss through its teeth like gas venting from pneumatic landing jacks. Vastor tucked the goad into its holster bolted to the ankkox's crown shell, then stepped forward over the drover chair and folded his thick-muscled arms.
He stared down into the eyes of the Jedi Master.
The akk dogs started to growl low in their throats, a sound more felt than heard, like the subterranean precursor of a coming groundquake.
The wind died; even the rustle of leaves went silent.
In the hush of fading day, the Force showed Mace a shatterpoint.
The darkness of the jungle, not of the Sith.
Life without the restraints of civilization.
"We're done," Nick said. "You get that, don't you? We're as done as a week-old roast.
What do they call it in the army? Aid and comfort to the enemy?" "Be quiet. Don't draw attention to yourself." "Great idea. Maybe they'll forget I'm here." "This isn't about aid and comfort to the enemy," Mace said. "If this were going to be anything military, they'd put us under arrest. We'd be taken back to have some kind of show trial witnessed by the rest of the ULF. Instead, we're out here in the jungle, and the only witnesses are Kar, Depa, and these akks-human and saurian." "So they're just gonna kill us." "If we're lucky," Mace said, "it's going to be a dogfight." "A ^ogfight? If we're lucky? Okay, sure. Let's not even try to make sense. Just tell me what I'm supposed to do." "You're supposed to remember that you are an officer of the Grand Army of the Republic." "I just took the fraggin' oath three hours ago-" "Three hours or thirty years. It makes no difference. You have sworn to conduct yourself to the credit of the Republic as its commissioned officer." "So that kind of rules out wetting my pants and sobbing like a baby, huh?" "Stay calm. Show no weakness. Think of Vastor as a wild akk: do nothing to trigger his prey drive. And shut up." "Oh, sure. Is that an order, General?" "Will making it an order help you do it?" Above on the ankkox's shell, Vastor had been staring silently while an aurora of rage built in the air around him. Only now did Mace meet the,'orpelek's gaze.
Mace allowed his lip to curl with a hint of contempt.
Nick whispered, "What are you doing?" Mace's gaze never wavered. "Nothing you need concern yourself with." "Urn, maybe I should have told you," the young Korun muttered nervously. "Kar doesn't like to be stared at." "I know." "It gets him mad." "He's already mad." "Yeah. And you're makin' him madder." "That's my intention." "Y'know," Nick said, "I'm gonna give up asking if you're crazy. Let's consider it a standing question, huh? Every time you open your mouth, go ahead and assume I'm wondering if nikkle nuts have started falling out your earholes. "Good morning, Nick.' Are you crazy? "Nice day, isn't it?' Are you crazy?" Mace hissed from the side of his mouth, "Will you be quiet?" "Are you crazy?" Nick ducked his head. "Sorry. Just a reflex." Vastor's jaw worked, and a wordless growl escaped from his tight-drawn lips.
You were sent for.
Mace sighed, looking bored.
Vastor's growl thickened.
Defiance carries a price.
Nick cocked his head, frowning. "This isn't about the prisoners?" Mace looked at him sidelong: Nick had understood. So Vaster was talking to both of them-or rather, to Mace, but at least partially for the benefit of Nick. He glanced up at the howdah.
Likely for the benefit of Depa as well.
"Of course it's about the prisoners," Mace said softly. "He's just warming up. Play along." Mace hooked his thumbs in his belt and walked casually forward. "I told you already: I am not to be sent for. Since you have brought her to me as ordered, I'll see her now." The shimmer around Vaster deepened, but he held himself perfectly still. His growl sharpened into a vine cat's hunting cough.,' don't take orders. Depa is here at her own request.
"Oh?" She came to say good-bye.
"I'm not going anywhere." Vastor's response was a silent grinning gape that showed all his inhumanly sharp teeth. He gestured, and the ring of akks and humans parted before him.
"I told you he's gonna kill us!" Nick hissed. "I toldyo't'ti't't Shee, I hate it when I'm right!" "Like I said before: think of Vaster as a wild akk. He won't kill us unless there's no other way to get what he wants." "Yeah? What does he want?" "Same as any akk dog: to assert his dominance. Defend his territory. And his pack." "And you think he won't kill us for taking those prisoners?" Mace shrugged. "Not you, anyway. You're subordinate: you don't really count." "Oh, sure. Thanks a lot-" Nick stopped in mid-sarcasm and looked thoughtful. "Know what? I think I actually mean that." "You're welcome." Vaster spun the hooked goad, and the ankkox lumbered toward Mace and Nick, its tail mace whipping through threatening arcs around it.
"So, what?" Nick kept on under his breath. "You think he's just gonna throw you out of here? "You got till sundown to get off my planet'?" "Something like that." "What about this hostage you were talkin' about?" "We'll see if we need him." "Urn, it's not me, is it? Because, y'know, to tell you the truth, I don't think Depa likes me all that much-or even, y'know, any. At all." "Hush." The ankkox stopped. The beak-curve of the crown armor on its landspeeder-sized skull lowered to the ground at Mace's feet. The beast's eyes were orange and gold and as large as Mace's head, and they peered up from under the curve of armor with melancholy saurian patience.
Vaster vaulted to the ground. Make your good-byes. Then you are leaving.
"Nice doggy." Nick said with a sickly forced smile. He gave a weak laugh. "Nice-" Vastor's immense left arm flashed at Nick in a blinding palm slap that would have taken his head right off before he could even blink-but that massive arm was intercepted by the heel of Mace's open hand.
Mace's fingers locked momentarily around Vastor's wrist. "He's with me," he said, and before the lor pelek could react, he released Vaster and backhanded Nick off his feet.
Nick lay crumpled on the leaf mold, stunned, staring up at Mace in astonishment. Through their Force-link, Mace sent a pulse of private reassurance: an invisible deadpan wink.
Nick played along. "What was that for?" The Jedi Master jabbed a finger at his face. "You are an officer in the Grand Army of the Republic. Act like one." "How does one act?" Mace turned back to Vastor. "I apologize for him." Vaster grunted. His mother should apologize.
"Any problem you have with him, you bring to me." Mace had to bend his neck back to look up into the lor peleKs eyes. "I struck one of your men, earlier. I apologize for that as well." He met Vastor's glare lazily. "I should have hit you." You are Depa's Master, and my doshalo, and I do not wish you harm. Vastor's rumble went low and silken. Don't touch me again.
Mace sighed, still looking bored. He said to Nick, "Don't get up," and to Vastor, "Excuse me," and he sidestepped the lor pelek to vault onto the dorsal shell of the ankkox.
He had time to wonder if his pretense of confidence was fooling anyone.
Mace looked up at the howdah, now only a step or two away. His mouth had gone entirely dry.
He still couldn't feel her.
Even this close, finally, after all this time, whatever presence she cast in the Force blended invisibly into the jungle n
ight around them.
The sick weight gathered in his chest again: the one that had been born weeks ago in Palpatine's office. The one that had grown heavier in Pelek Baw, and had nearly crushed him last night in the outpost bunker. That weight had lifted somehow through this long afternoon: maybe it was because he'd been so sure he was doing the right thing.
The only thing.
And now he was a meter away from being face to face with her: his Padawan: his protegee: the woman for whose sake he had left behind Coruscant and the Jedi Temple and the simple abstractions of strategic war. For whose sake he had plunged into this jungle. Had subjected himself to the harsh, complicated, intractable reality behind the strategies that had seemed so simple and so clean back in the sterile chambers of the Council.
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