Shatterpoint

Sometimes you're wrong. Then you die. Or you have to live with having killed a friend." He showed his teeth, but his smile had no warmth left in it. "And sometimes you're right and you die anyway. Sometimes your friend isn't a friend. You never know. You cant know." "I can. That's part of what being a Jedi is." Nick's smile had turned knowing. "Okay. Take your pick. We're murderers who must be brought to justice. Or we're soldiers doing our duty. Either way, who else is go

And, in the end, the decision Mace reached surprised none of them. It disappointed only himself.

Nick had winked. "Welcome to Haruun Kal." Now the groundcar's dust plume slipped into a fold of the hills, and was gone.

At the green wall above, Besh and Lesh had already vanished into the canopied shadow.

Chalk and Nick waited for him just below the tree line, crouched in the scrub, watching the sky.

Outlined against the green.

The wall of jungle was green only on the outside: between the leaves and trunks, among the fronds and flowers and vines, was shadow so thick that from out here under the brilliant sun, it looked entirely black.

Mace thought, It's not too late to change my mind.

He could leave Nick here. Could turn his back on Chalk and Besh and Lesh. Hike along the road, catch a ride into Pelek Baw, hop a shuttle for the next liner on the Gevarno Loop.

He knew, somehow, that this was his last chance to walk away. That once he crossed the green wall, the only way out would be through.

He couldn't guess what he might find on the way- Except, possibly, Depa.

you should never have sent me here. And I should never have come.

It was too late to change his mind after all.

He was in the jungle already.

He'd walked into it from the shuttle in the Pelek Baw spaceport. Maybe from the balcony on Geonosis. Or maybe he'd been just standing still, and the jungle had grown around him before he'd noticed.

Welcome to Haruun Kal.

His boots crunched through the husks of bracken as he toiled up the slope. Chalk nodded to him and vanished through the wall. Nick gave him a smile as if he knew what Mace had been thinking.

"Better keep up, Master Windu. Another minute, we woulda left you standing there. You want to be alone out here? I don't think so." He was right about that. "If we should happen to get separated, is there a landmark I should make for?" "Don't worry about it. Just keep up." "But if we do, how will I find you?" "You won't." Nick shook his head, smiling into the jungle. "If we get separated, you won't live long enough to worry about finding us. You get it? Keep up." He walked into the trees and was swallowed by the green twilight.

Mace nodded to himself, and followed Nick into the shadows without looking back.

THE SUMMERTIME WAR S

ingle file through the jungle: Chalk picked their path, parting gleamfronds, tipping gripleaf trailers aside with the muzzle of the Thunderbolt. Mace followed perhaps ten meters back, with Nick close behind his shoulder. Besh and Lesh brought up the rear together, switching positions from time to time, covering each other.

Mace had to look sharp to keep track of Chalk. Once they were well into the jungle, he could no longer easily feel any of the Koru

Occasionally a Force-pulse as unmistakable as an upraised hand came from one or another of the Koru

It was even hotter under the trees than in full sunlight. Any relief due to shade was canceled by the damp smothering stillness of the air. Though Mace heard a constant ruffle of leaves and branches high above, the breeze never seemed to reach down through the canopy.

They broke out into a gap, and Nick called a halt. The jungle canopy layered a roof above them, but the folds of ground here were clear for dozens of meters around, smooth gray-gold trunks of jungle trees becoming cathedral buttresses supporting walls of leaf and vine. Upslope, a spring-fed pond brimmed over into a steamy sulfur-scented stream.

Chalk moved into the middle of the gap, lowered her head, and went entirely still. A Force wave passed out from her and broke across Mace and thirty-five years fell away: for a delicious instant he was once more a boy returned to the company of ghosh Windu after a lifetime in the Jedi Temple, feeling for the first time the silken warmth of a Korun's Force-call to an akk.

Then it passed, and Mace was again a grown man, again a Jedi Master, tired and worried: frightened for his friend, his Order, and his Republic.

Within minutes a crashing outside the gap heralded the arrival of large beasts, and soon the jungle wall parted to admit a grasser. It lumbered into the gap on its hind legs, its four anterior limbs occupied with ripping down greenery and stuffing it into a mouth large enough to swallow Mace whole. It chewed placidly, bovine contentment in all three of its eyes. It turned these eyes toward the humans one at a time: first the right, then the left, then the crown, assuring itself that none of its three eyes spied a threat.

Three more grassers tore their way into the gap. All four were harnessed for riding, the wide saddles cinched above and below their foreshoulders, exactly as Mace remembered. One wore a dual-saddle setup, the secondary saddle slung reversed at the beast's mid-shoulder.

All four grassers were thin, smaller than Mace remembered-the largest of them might not have topped six meters at full stretch-and their gray coats were dull and coarse: a far cry from the sleek, glossy behemoths he'd ridden all those years ago. This was as troubling as anything he'd yet seen. Had these Koru

Nick reached up to take the knotted mounting rope of the dual-saddled grasser. "Come on, Master Windu. You're riding with me." "Where are your akks?" "Around. Can't you feel them?" And now Mace could: a ring of predatory wariness outside the green walls: savagery and hunger and devotion tangled into a semi-sentient knot of Let's-Find-Something-to-Kill.

Nick rope-walked up the flank of the grasser and slid into the upper saddle. "You'll see them if you need to see them. Let's hope you don't." "Is it no longer customary to introduce a guest to the akks of the ghosh?" "You're not a guest, you're a package." Nick slid a brassvine goad out of its holster beside the saddle. "Mount up. Let's get out of here." Without even understanding why he did it, Mace moved away into the middle of the gap.